Rocky Mountain Sabotage. Jill Nelson Elizabeth
lightened. Quite a pair of admirable women, these two.
Dirk’s scowl barely dimmed. “The shorter the better.” He tromped away to hunker down on one of the cushions near the heat source.
“I’m going to make one last trip out to the plane,” Kent said. “Phil? Cliff? Are you still my main men?”
“What about me?” Dirk jumped up.
“I didn’t think you’d want to handle luggage with a broken finger.”
Dirk snickered. “You’re right. I don’t.” He turned his back and held out his hands toward the stove.
Kent gritted his teeth.
Cliff brushed past him with a sidelong look. “I’m about ready to smack the smirk off of Dirk.”
Swallowing laughter, Kent followed him and big, lumbering Phil out the door. An hour later, as the sun closed in on the horizon, they returned with a full load of luggage and one stunning item that left all humor out in the cold.
Kent hauled Mags’s wheelie and a bulky bundle into the makeshift hospital area. He stared down at his inert copilot, frost riming him from the inside out. Lauren took a look at his face and rose from her kneeling position.
“What is it?” she said. “And don’t give me a slick answer.”
Kent eyeballed the activity going on near the door where everyone was crowding around to receive their luggage. The prospect of jackets and additional clothing, as well as toiletry items, was exciting in a good way after all the excitement in a bad way. The thumping and bumping and babble of eager voices would likely cover any conversation between him and the too-insightful physician’s assistant.
“This.” He lifted the bulky pack. “It’s a parachute.”
Her eyes widened. “Isn’t that standard equipment aboard your aircraft?”
He shook his head, bereft of speech as the possibilities—no, probabilities—buzzed around in his brain.
“Someone else brought it on board?”
“There is no tag on this item, so none of our passengers checked it in. Mags oversaw the loading of the luggage. She’s the only one who could have put it there.”
“But why?”
“That’s the gazillion-dollar question, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the answer stinks to the moon and back. Who would have needed an unorthodox exit from the aircraft?”
The sharp intake of Lauren’s breath marked comprehension. “Only someone who knew an emergency was going to happen.”
“Bingo. And the layout of my plane allows access to the luggage bay from the bathroom. Just sneak back there, don the chute and out you go. Nice and neat.”
Color receded from her face. “So we have to conclude that the plane was sabotaged. Would Mags have had the know-how to rig whatever caused the explosion?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kent crossed his arms. “She was the bomb expert on our flight crew in Afghanistan.”
“She was in the air force with you? Somebody you trusted? Wow. That’s got to hurt.”
Kent’s skin tightened. She’d said a mouthful. It was hard to explain the camaraderie that developed between soldiers in the military. Such a level of betrayal bit deep, and somehow, this woman got it without explanation.
Lauren laid a hand on his arm. “We still don’t know why she tried to destroy the plane.”
“That, and which one of our passengers was in on the deal.”
“What do you mean?” Her brows knit together.
He grimaced. “This is a tandem chute. Two people dive in it. Somebody was planning to leave with her, but got stuck in the plane with us because Mags was incapacitated.”
Lauren’s jaw dropped, and she leaned in toward him. “Someone walking around in this room tried to kill us? Wow. And they could try again!”
Kent delivered a single, decisive nod. “For now, let’s keep the discovery of this parachute our secret. Her accomplice doesn’t need to be alerted that his existence has been exposed.”
“Allow him to relax, get complacent and maybe slip up somehow?”
“Exactly. And we need to pray that Mags wakes up—at least long enough to tell us his name—or we’re all the proverbial sitting ducks. Anybody with the brains and guts to devise and carry out this sabotage plan will be quick to implement a Plan B that will glean him the same results—us dead and himself home free.”
A deep cough rent Lauren’s chest, jerking her awake. A blanket wrapped around her where she lay against a hard floor, head cradled by a leather cushion. Acrid smoke gagged her nostrils and burned the back of her throat. She lunged to a sitting position, as hacking coughs and cries of “Fire!” converged from every direction.
Her mind spun. In front of her eyes, the room was dark as the inside of a barrel. From behind her shoulders, a ruddy heat cast a muted glow. Where was she? Oh, yes. The sabotaged plane. Emergency landing. Shelter in the abandoned mercantile. And now...fire!
Crash-bruised muscles protested her sudden scramble to get to her feet, but the blanket entangled her, and she fell backward hard on her behind. A moan and a cough came from her immediate right. Richard. No sound from her left. Mags remained unconscious...or worse.
“Help!” she cried through a strangled cough. “Help me with the patients.”
Thumping noises, like hurried footsteps, answered her, but the sounds were headed in every direction except her location on the far side of the stove.
“Where’s the door?” a male voice screamed. Cliff.
Yes, where was the door, but also, where was the fire? She glanced over her shoulders, and made out the dark form of the potbellied stove. All normal enough, and yet bitter, pine-tinged smoke swirled everywhere.
She had to get her patients out of here! Lauren yanked herself from the blanket’s grip and stood, staring around. Hazy lights bobbed here and there. As they’d done before the group turned in last night, people were using their cell phone flashlights. Without cell service, the phones weren’t good for much else, and from the volume of smoke in the room, not much good for lighting, either. The glow was more disorienting than illuminating.
“Where are you, Lauren?” Feminine tones rose above the panicked din.
“Mom!” Lauren answered. “Don’t look—” she coughed “—for me! Find a way out!”
“Jade Eyes!”
A burn in the pit of Lauren’s stomach joined the burn in her throat. Kent. She needed his strong arms and back to move Rich and Mags.
“Over here. Help me with the patients.”
“Keep calling ou—” A throaty hack chopped off the last bit of the sentence.
“He...re!” Her lungs cramped against the invading fumes.
“Get low. Stay low, everyone.” His voice was much closer and near her knees.
Lauren dropped down to join him. “Where?”
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