Killer Summer (Walt Fleming)

by Ridley Pearson

  Down to his heart, Walt was thinking, feeling the same thing in his own chest.

  “Let’s hope not,” he said.

  51

  Kevin watched out the small window in the jet’s emergency door, his face pressed against the glass, as the ground beneath them raced past illuminated by the orange flames coming from the engine.

  He held fast to the door’s handle as the brakes squealed. The plane shuddered, then slowed. A cloud erupted from the engine, followed by darkness. The fire was out.

  There were no runway lights, no outbuildings visible.

  “Ready?” Kevin said, the plane rolling to a stop.

  Summer didn’t answer, paralyzed by all that had just happened.

  “Matches!” he said. “I forgot the matches.”

  Despite herself, Summer pulled open a drawer in the galley and grabbed a pack of matches. She wasn’t as far gone as he thought.

  He yanked on the handle, pushing the door open and grabbing a suddenly unwilling Summer.

  “It’s still moving,” she protested.

  “We’re going, anyway,” he said.

  Holding the squirming Summer around the waist, he began lowering her to the ground.

  “Tuck and roll,” he said, and let her go.

  As an afterthought, he tossed out the knife. He couldn’t jump with it in his pocket.

  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.

  52

  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.”

  “We’re on it. We’re contacting every airfield.”

  “Takes a good deal of runway to land a jet.”

  “We’re on it,” Walt repeated.

  “The right kind of satellite might pick up a flare out. I can check on that as well.”

  “Anything you can do . . . The sooner we can track that jet—”

  “I’m coming over there.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Did I ask? I said I’m coming over there. If you find Kevin, then call me. Otherwise, plan to pick me up in . . . ninety minutes. I’ll call you from the plane.”

  “The company jet?”

  “You could have had this, Walt. This was your choice, not mine. I’ll call from the jet and give you a number where you can reach me. See you shortly.”

  Cringing, Walt hung up the phone. He had ninety minutes to save himself from certain hell.

  53

  The forest floor was interrupted by chokecherry and brambles, slash and deadfall. Often impassable, the changing terrain required Kevin to traverse the hill instead of climbing vertically. Summer not only stayed with him but occasionally took the lead. While the forest’s darkness made for slow going, using the flashlight would have been suicide, revealing their position in the same way the glow of a light below them told them where the chase was coming from.

  Still a good distance away, there was no question that at least one of the three men had followed them into the woods.

  “I don’t get it,” he whispered, huffing a bit. “Why bother with us?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “They obviously stole the plane, right?”

  “Okay . . .”

  “We were never part of that, so why follow us?”

  “Because we saw them?” she suggested.

  “No,” he said. “We can’t be the only ones who saw them. That doesn’t make sense. I think it’s you.”

  “What about me?”

  “I think they want you. The jet’s wrecked. You’re the prize. And me? I’m nothing but . . . an inconvenience. I’m disposable.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “I hope I’m wrong,” he said, now picking up the pace.

  Summer suddenly passed him and leaped onto one of the huge boulders they’d been avoiding.

  “Come on,” she urged.

  She led the way up and over the rock.

  “Don’t scuff the ground,” she hissed. “Don’t give them anything to follow.”

  She led them nearly straight up the hill.

  Light played in the overhead branches, then dimmed and moved left. Summer and Kevin headed higher, though considerably slower, in total silence. The next time Kevin checked, the beam had moved well away.

  “Awesome,” he said.

  Summer shushed him.

  The ground leveled off. The trees thinned. The moonlight shone brighter.

  “Check it out!” she said.

  They faced a rambling lodge cut into the rocky hill, making it look as if its log walls grew right out of the cliff. Bluish light glowed from the windows nearest them. Less light came from the far end of the lodge, where Kevin now spotted a tall, white-haired man on a path leading toward some stairs emerging from the forest, stairs that led down to the airfield. A pair of floodlights shone from the corner eaves of the lodge, casting a halogen glare across a field of wild grass.

  The lodge was landscaped on three sides by a clearing. Summer stepped forward obviously wanting to call out to the man, but Kevin pulled her back.

  “We have two choices here,” Kevin said, his lips to her ear, “the forest or the house.”

  He pointed to the treetops. The flashlight beam had turned yet again and was once again coming up the hill from behind them.

  The tall man—he looked like an old cowboy—wore blue jeans, boots, and a light-colored long-sleeved shirt. He stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “Over here!” he called out loudly in the direction of the flashlight beam.

  The beam froze, illuminating the tops of trees. Then it began to advance again up the hill, directly toward Kevin and Summer.

  Kevin tugged on Summer’s arm, making sure he had her attention. He pointed to a pair of doors cut into the rock at the base of the lodge, either a garage or storage area, by the look of it.

  He drew her close and whispered. “Follow me, fast and low, straight for those doors.”

  “He’ll help us!” She meant the cowboy.

  The crunching of undergrowth grew ever louder. Whoever was following them was close now.

  “Over here!” the cowboy called out. He headed down the stairs.

  The lawn was now empty.

  “Trust me,” Kevin said to Summer.

  He pulled her, and she followed. Together, they ran toward the lodge, reaching the shadows sheltering the two doors.

  “Okay?” he asked, panting.

  She nodded.

  He felt for the door latch. It engaged, and the heavy door sagged open.

  “There are stairs over here!” the cowboy called out. The flashlight beam paused briefly.

  “It’s going to be dark in there,” Kevin warned.

  Summer nodded.

  “No noise,” he added.

  “So, shut up!” she said.

  “Whatever . . .”

  Kevin slipped inside, Summer followed. He took one look around, then eased the door shut, blocking out the light, and gently lowered the latch in place.

  The space smelled of cedar and grass, oil and dust. He slipped the flashlight under his shirt to mute its beam, then quickly flashed it on and off to get his bearings. They saw a pair of sawhorses, a workbench, trash bins, tarps, a small tractor, a skimobile or ATV—maybe both—and extension cords, ropes, and tools hanging from a pegboard on the right wall. There was a stack of firewood against the back wall. Steps at the far left of the room led to a door. He determined a route for them to follow.

  “We should have stayed in the woods,” she said in a hot whisper. “Or said something to that guy.”

  “We’ve got to get word to someone,” he said.

  He pulled out his cell phone, turned it on, silenced its ringer.

  “No bars,” he said, angrily jamming the phone back in his pocket.

  “I’ve got to pee,” she said.

  “You’ve got to hold it,” he said.

  “There is no way I’m going to hold it.”

  “So, pee.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’ll turn my back.”

  “I am not peeing in the dirt.”

  “I am not dealing with this.”

  “There�
�s got to be a toilet in the house.”

  “Why don’t you go ask if you can use it?”

  She huffed at him.

  “We’re somewhere near the Middle Fork,” he said. “There’re a half dozen of these places, max, in a couple thousand square miles of wilderness. There could be a neighbor a half mile away. But it might be forty miles or more.”

  “That’s impossible. We were in the air, what, like ten minutes? Fifteen? How far could we have gone?”

  “At three hundred miles an hour, you do the math. The point is, all these places have radios. Maybe that cowboy dude lives here all alone. We need that radio. So, come on.”

  Kevin reached out for Summer in the dark and found her arm. She didn’t resist him as he led her along his newly memorized route. He moved slowly, inching his feet out ahead and avoiding knocking over any of the objects he encountered. As the toe of his running shoe connected with the first step of the stairs at the back of the room, he pocketed the flashlight, trading it for the steak knife. He tested the step. It accepted his weight without creaking. They then climbed slowly, eventually reaching the door at the top.

  He tried the handle. It wasn’t locked.

  He couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel Summer trembling. She squeezed his arm, wanting him to reconsider.

  He found her ear and whispered, “Better odds if they don’t catch both of us. There’s a tarp in the corner. Hide under it.” He tried leading her back down the stairs.

  “No way,” she hissed, resisting.

  “Way,” he said. “I may need you to save me.”

  “Right . . .”

  “Remember, you’re the prize, not me. We can’t let you get caught.”

  He eased her down the steps, found their way along the stack of firewood, and reached the tarp. It smelled pleasantly of oiled canvas, triggering memories of his father and camping trips.

  He sat her down. “Stay here until I come back for you.”

  “And what if you don’t?” She sounded angry.

  “If we get separated,” he said, not answering her directly, “then we meet at the far end of the runway near the jet. You still have your key. There are radios on the jet as well.”

  He pulled the tarp over her head before she could reply. He tucked it around her. He flicked the light once to make sure she was covered, then waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark again.