by Dale Mayer
“She had said something about the assistant instructor having trouble with Wynn’s unit earlier, and so I stuck with her. I just had this feeling …”
“Did she say what the original trouble was?” Kanen asked.
Tanner shook his head.
“Sounds like nobody should have taken it up,” Mason said. “It was a pretty grim end to an otherwise great day.”
“True enough,” Tanner said. “But we’ve done enough paragliding to know it’s a relatively safe sport.”
“As long as maintenance is done on all the equipment,” Jackson said. “And I have to believe somebody who does this for a living knows how to look after her gear.”
“Not only does she look after her gear but she’s been working on new designs and prototypes for a long time,” Mason said. “Normally we would have had this training within our own ranks, but, because this is one of her designs, we were test bunnies for a civilian.”
“Personally I thought her gliders were dynamite,” Tanner declared. “So much more control. I could have floated for hours up there. The second run was particularly good. With all the warm air funnels, I was up for almost an hour.”
Mason agreed.
Tanner asked Jackson, “Did you see anything odd about Wynn’s run yesterday?”
“You mean, other than the fact she crashed and burned in a spectacular way?”
“And we’re sure it’s not something else?” Kanen asked cautiously. “I know she seems sane and normal and all that stuff, but you know what? Going down like that could certainly have been a suicide attempt.”
The other guys just stared at Kanen.
Kanen shrugged. “I know that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, but we’ve certainly seen it happen and been surprised each time.”
“We might have, but I don’t see her as that type of person,” Tanner said quietly, his mind refuting the idea.
She was so full of life and had struggled so hard to hold the paraglider in the sky. And then she’d been determined not to take him down with her. For those who wanted to believe it was a failed suicide attempt, they would probably take that as a confirmation of their theory. Yet, in his view, it showed an instructor who was bound and determined to not take another life down with her. Never an easy thing to do.
He shook his head. “I don’t see it.” Just then his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, noting the ID on his screen, calling out, “It’s her.” He took several steps away. “Wynn, are you okay?”
The light laugh on the other end of the phone reassured him, and he relaxed slightly and rocked on his heels. “Glad to hear you’re laughing. I was more than a little worried about you last night. I felt terrible leaving.”
“It was quite chaotic, and you were on duty, so it makes sense.”
“How late did you stay?”
“A couple hours,” she admitted. “I took a lot of pictures after I got my equipment stretched out, trying to figure out what happened. But there’s so much damage and so many cut strings from not only the crash but from untangling me and then from getting it loaded back up again that honestly I’m not sure I can tell anything. That’s the conclusion I came to last night anyway,” she said, but her voice was quiet.
In the background he could hear a lot of noise. “Are you at work?”
“Yes, I am. That was my personal paraglider, but yours was company-owned. So, of course, I have meetings coming up this morning about the accident. Postmortems are never fun. Yours is damaged to the point it’s a write-off, and the school’s insurance will cover it, but that’s not the issue.”
“It could have been worse,” he joked. “We both could have crashed and burned on the ground.”
“Believe me, that joke’s been tossed around a couple times already this morning.” Her tone turned brisk as she added, “So you don’t need to keep calling me. I’m fine.”
“Except for the fact somebody’s trying to kill you …” He growled. “And I really don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Just because you saved my life once,” she said on another laugh, “does not make you responsible for it ever after.”
“Well, there’s definitely a line of thought that says exactly the opposite.” He didn’t know how to make her realize how serious this was. Finally he said, “If something happened to you, and I didn’t do anything about it when I could have, I’d never forgive myself. I get that you don’t know me and maybe don’t particularly care to know me, but I do feel like we’ve bonded over a near-death experience that’s just a little too horrific to relive.”
“I hope to never relive it,” she said. “I don’t mean to make light of it. I just don’t think there’s anything you can do.”
“Are you going to contact the police?”
“I’m not sure what I can tell them. I had a paragliding accident. Was it possibly sabotage? Yes. Did a line snap, even though we do the best we can to change them out after so many flight hours are logged? Yes. But accidents do happen.”
“What about your chute?” He heard her catch her breath and frowned. “Please tell me that you just couldn’t get to it or something like that.”
“I got to it,” she said, her voice soft, barely above a whisper. “But it wouldn’t open.”
“Shit,” he whispered. “You see? Now that’s just another one of those major things happening to you recently that make this all too real.”
“How do you think I felt about it?” she said. “Particularly at the time. The thing is, I haven’t found my chute. All the equipment came back to the warehouse, but there’s no sign of my chute. I figure it’s at the bottom of the river.”
Now he really didn’t like to hear that. “Who packs the chutes?”
“I always do my own,” she said, her tone weary. “So, in theory, there shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“And those do happen every once in a while,” he said thoughtfully. “But when you add it all together, no way this is a coincidence.”
“Exactly,” she said, her voice getting fainter.
Then he heard somebody call out to her, and she responded with “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She came back to his conversation. “Look. I have to go. The bosses aren’t very happy with me at the moment. Bad press and all that.”
“Just how unhappy are they?” His voice was hard. “Are they unhappy you destroyed the equipment or unhappy you survived?”
“Good question,” she said. “But I have no answer yet.” Then she hung up.
He put away his phone, turned around to see the rest of the guys had moved off. He walked over to join the few left.
Mason asked, “Any update?”
“She went over the equipment last night, couldn’t find any sign of obvious sabotage. However, there was so much damage after the crash that she’s not sure she would have been able to tell. However, there is one other point that made me extremely leery.”
The men looked at him expectantly.
He said, “Her chute also didn’t open.”
At that, everybody stiffened.
Tanner nodded. “Right. Too many accidents all at once.”
“Yeah. And that takes it into the realm of attempted murder,” Jackson said quietly. “And, of course, she’s probably not going to the police without hard evidence, is she? Not to mention if she’s the type to think the best of people, she’s not going to believe she’s actually in danger.”
“Right. I don’t think she’s going to the police any time soon,” Tanner said. “She was heading into a meeting with her bosses. Apparently they’re not terribly impressed. Bad press, damaged equipment, etcerta.”
But Mason put that in perspective. “And you have to wonder just how many people might want to see her in trouble with the bosses.”
“Or how the bosses might want to see her fail, although I’m not sure just why they would want that,” Kanen said.
“Hard to say. But, no matter which way you look at it, she’s in trouble.”
Tanner agreed. “The problem is, what am I going to do about it?”
Chapter 3
By the time the meeting with her bosses was over, Wynn felt rough. One of the owners, Curtis, had been pretty vocal about the damage to the school’s paraglider. He had couched it in terms of Oh, thank goodness Tanner was there to save you, but, at the same time, Curtis had made her feel bad because the cost of these paragliders was pretty extreme. As if she didn’t have a good idea of that, since she and her brother had their own business of designing and producing paragliders.
But her main boss, Charlie, had been the worst, saying the bad press would kill their business. And the whole reason for bringing her on board was to increase business. She was supposed to be the face of paragliding, to give them a whole new lease on life, a marketing uptick, so to speak. And now, with the bad press, her presence was a detriment—one he would like to put a quick stop to. She’d explained about the sabotage, but he wouldn’t listen. And that’s why she wasn’t telling the police. They’d just brush it off as Charlie had.
He was angry it had happened at all. She understood that. She wondered if it was time to leave. She and her brother, who was an engineer, were designing new harnesses. They’d applied for patents on several new control systems. Still, she had hoped to stay here at the school for at least another two to three years, to pay the bills but also to fund their research while the patents went through, before they began producing their own paragliders. She needed this job. She needed to keep producing money.
On cue, her phone rang. She looked at the screen to see Todd’s name. He had probably heard by now. Groaning, she answered it with a bright, cheerful voice. “Hey, how is big brother doing?”
“It depends if little sister held something back about her day yesterday, something that even still terrifies me to think might have been the truth.”
She groaned, walked over to the big window, stared out over the tarmac. “Who told you?”
“Harry. You know how he likes to keep me in touch with everything you’re doing, good and bad,” her brother said caustically. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to worry you,” she said quietly, making sure nobody could overhear. “And I’m fine, thank you.”
“How bad was it?”
“Well, if one of the other paragliders hadn’t helped maneuver me down safely, I would have smacked into the ground at about thirty miles per hour,” she said, like speaking of someone else. “At my suggestion, we bailed into the river, and I almost drowned because I got caught up in the lines and between the wings of his paraglider and mine.”
There was a shocked silence on the other end of the phone before he yelled, “What?”
“Yeah. So it was bad.” She took a deep breath. “And you’re right. I should have called you, but I was pretty shaken. My body’s real reaction set in sometime in the middle of the night, when I woke up reliving the landing over and over again.”
“How did it happen?” His words were stuttered.
It had been just the two of them for years. Their parents had been gone a long time now. So she and Todd were very close, and, of course, if she had died, he would have been left alone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be quite so callous about it all. But I’m finding it’s a little easier to deal with the pain and shock myself if I don’t dwell on it too much. As for what happened, the corner right line snapped, and the wing billowed up and lost its loft. The framework came apart in midair.”
“But that should never happen.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I have lots of pictures of my crashed paraglider. I did stretch it all out in the hangar last night and took photos of everything.”
“Send them to me,” he said. “I want to go over them.”
“One other thing you should know,” she said. She took a deep breath. “I reached for my parachute. And it wouldn’t open. And you know I was flying without a reserve,” she murmured. “As I always do.”
More silence passed, and then he exploded. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
She leaned against the window; her heart warmed at her brother’s reaction. “Right?” she said calmly. “And that can happen, as we well know. But not very often.”
“About one in every ten thousand,” he said.
Her brother loved data.
“Accidents do happen. Shit still goes wrong. But in this case …”
“Yeah, in this case, somebody wanted to make sure I did not survive that fall.”
“Who?” he asked urgently.
“I haven’t a clue,” she said.
Two men walked toward her. She gave them a smile and stepped out of the nearby doorway, turning slightly so they would know and see she was on the phone. They walked on past.
With a sigh of relief, she whispered, “I just came out of a meeting with the bosses. Curtis is pissed off about the school’s paraglider being damaged. And Charlie is pissed off at what he says is catastrophic bad press.”
“I don’t suppose either of them expressed sorrow that you were involved in such a horrific accident,” Todd said. “Isn’t it time you quit that job?”
“I’m not sure I’ll have a job to quit in a couple days,” she said. “They weren’t happy at all. If the media gets ahold of this, and it becomes a shit storm, then you can bet I won’t have a job tomorrow.”
“I’m totally okay with that. We’ll make do one way or another.”
She smiled. Her brother not only loved data, he loved engineering and building. But he did not handle the books, and he did not pay the rent or buy the groceries. “You know we can’t afford for me to quit,” she said. “As much as I would enjoy the downtime, I can’t quit. We need the money.”
“Do we though? Maybe we need to sell assets instead.”
“You’ve got a good point there,” she said cheerfully. “We’ve got to make sure that, whoever this asshole is, he doesn’t succeed. No point in working for a living if I don’t get to live.”
“No joking,” he snapped. “This is serious.”
“It is. I know,” she said gently. “I’m sorry. I’m just distancing myself from it all. It was pretty horrible.”
“I’m sure it was,” he said. “Are you coming home now? Surely it’s safer here.”
“No,” she said. “As much as I’d like to, I need to see this through. I’ve got a class in a couple hours.”
“Call me if anything else turns up. And make sure you send me those damn photos.”
“I will,” she promised. Hanging up, she pocketed her phone and headed back into the hangar. They ran a lot of classes here with a lot of instructors, and there was always maintenance to be done on the equipment. What she didn’t want was for anybody to assume she’d lost her nerve.
As she walked in, Bruce called out, “Shitty day yesterday, huh?”
She nodded. “One of the worst.”
“You’re going back up again?”
“I so am,” she called out with a thumbs-up sign. In fact, she was due to go out in another two hours. She checked her watch and considered that. Gives me time to go over my remaining paraglider to make sure it’s not damaged.
And, if people left her alone, she could get that done. She walked into the second hangar where her spare paraglider was, and this time she went over it with extra care, taking photos before she was due to head out.
Curtis came over and stood in front of her. “What are you doing?”
“Checking my equipment before I go out this afternoon.”
“I changed your teaching schedule this afternoon,” he said. “I figured you needed some time off.”
She straightened and glared at him. “Why would you do that?”
He shrugged. “It was an unnerving experience. I figured a day off wouldn’t hurt you.”
As much as she studied him, she couldn’t see anything deceptive in his face. But his tone was slightly off. She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“You might be fine, but what
will you do if you damage this one?” he said, motioning to the paraglider in front of her. “You only own two.”
“I’ll get another,” she said shortly. “What excuse did you use for my class?”
“Just that you’re under the weather.”
“Not good enough,” she said. “These people signed up to work with me. A substitute is not the same thing.”
“It’s not like you can’t be replaced,” he said. “Maybe this is a good chance, a good opportunity, to figure out just how replacing you would look.” And he turned and walked away.
*
Tanner drove his Jeep into the school’s large parking lot and parked beside a dark purple Jeep. He hopped out and walked into the front of the office building.
The receptionist smiled. “We’re just about to close,” she said. “In fact, almost everybody’s gone. Is there anything I can help you with?”
He smiled at her. “I’m looking for Wynn. Is she still here?”
The receptionist pointed at the purple Jeep through the big front window and said, “If that’s here, she’s here.”
He cast a glance back and grinned. “Figures she drives something like that.”
“Apparently she has driven nothing but Jeeps since she was sixteen.” The receptionist laughed. “The guys bug her about it a lot. This is the first one she’s had in a girly color, she says.”
He twisted and studied the rich plum-hued Jeep. “I really like that color. It’s more of a deep purple than a light lavender girly purple.”
“I think it’s pretty too,” the receptionist confessed. “The warehouse doors are still open, if you want to walk over there. She’s probably cleaning up.”
“Did she have any training sessions today?”
“She was supposed to but was grounded after the accident yesterday. Another instructor went up in her place.”
He nodded, turned and walked away with a wave of thanks. But inside he wondered. He was relieved she hadn’t gone out, but, at the same time, it was better for her if she immediately did. The longer one took to get back on the horse, so to speak, the harder it was to do so. It was a good couple minutes’ walk crossing the pavement to the open warehouse. He stood just inside the big open hangar doors and searched. It was gloomy inside. He took several steps in and called out, “Wynn, you here?”
