10. Rusty
CHAPTER 10
RUSTY
“ S he’s sending a helicopter?” Rusty asked, incredulous. “Just like that, she’s sending a helicopter?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Is this normal for private investigators? You have helicopters at your disposal?”
“No, I don’t think so. But Ari knows a girl who knows a girl, and she said we need to go to the VIP terminal at the airport and wait.”
“You’re sure this isn’t a joke?”
“Ari’s contact doesn’t know how to joke. She seems real serious all the time.”
Rusty was familiar with the VIP terminal. He’d been there once before with Mav when Mav got a wild hair to fly to Reno one weekend, probably because he’d exhausted every hot chick in every casino in Vegas. At least Erin didn’t constantly hit on members of the opposite sex. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be so bad?
Once they reached the terminal, he explained to the hostess why they were there, and she seemed to know about the helicopter because she waved them into a lounge and told them to wait right there. Barely half an hour had passed when a stunning woman with tan skin and blonde hair strolled in, glanced around, and settled her gaze on Erin. This was their pilot?
“You must be Erin and Rusty,” she said as she reached them. “I’m Sin.”
“What kind of name is Sin?” he blurted before he got his thoughts in order.
“Not the one my momma gave me, that’s for sure. The helicopter is this way.”
Their ride was sleek and silver, gleaming in the sun. Sin opened the rear door and motioned them inside before hopping back into the cockpit.
“Okay, where are we going?” she asked.
Erin was still watching the flight radar app on her phone. “They flew past the Hoover Dam, and now they’re heading for the Grand Canyon.”
“Then we’ll meet them there.”
Sin wasn’t wearing a uniform, not even a shirt with a logo. Was she a commercial pilot? Who else would drop everything to fly two strangers to a tourist attraction?
“Are you sure you don’t mind taking us? This is short notice. And how do we pay you?”
“There’s no money involved. I could just do with getting in some flight hours. Apparently, I’ve spent too long cooped up in the house.”
“Did Alexa tell you that?” Erin asked. Who was Alexa?
“How did you guess? She’s such a little hypocrite.”
There were worse ways to spend a Sunday. But not many. Rusty stared out the window at the landscape beneath as they flew low over the desert. And when he said “low,” he meant low .
Horrifyingly low.
“Isn’t there a flight ceiling we’re supposed to adhere to?” he asked through his headset, the thump-thump-thump of his heart against his ribcage almost as loud as the helicopter’s rotors.
“A flight ceiling is how high we can fly, not how low. I believe you’re thinking of the FAA’s minimum safe altitude,” Sin said. “Which is five hundred feet for an airplane over unpopulated areas, but that’s for a fixed-wing, and we’re in a rotary-wing.”
“I wasn’t asking for a lesson in regulations. Is it safe to fly so close to the fucking ground?”
“Relax, I won’t crash.”
Erin had her nose pressed against the window, her hands cupped around her face as she watched the scenery go by. Sin glanced back at her, taking her eyes off of the controls for a few seconds longer than was comfortable.
“First time in a helicopter?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.” So, Erin had been telling the truth when she said she didn’t make a habit of this. “I never even went in an airplane until last year, but this is way more fun.”
Fun? Rusty almost laughed. Almost, but not quite, because he much preferred a mode of transport that stayed in contact with the ground. He breathed a sigh of relief when Sin parked the helicopter at the bottom of the West Rim of the Grand Canyon beside half a dozen others. Was that red beast the helicopter Kelsey had ridden in? Yes, the registration on the tail matched the code Erin had been muttering to herself for the past hour.
It took the two of them fifteen minutes to catch up with Kelsey’s tour group—Sin stayed with the helicopter—and Rusty was sweating profusely by the time they got there. At least he’d shaved the beard. Kelsey was standing beside a preppy guy who wore his dirty-blond hair slicked back and shiny, a style that complemented his cargo shorts and pink golf shirt. It was no surprise that he wore socks with his boat shoes. Kelsey leaned in to study the guidebook he was holding.
“Better to stay back,” Erin said. “We could pretend to be tourists and get up close, she wouldn’t suspect a thing, but that would limit our movements later.”
“Agreed.”
She played her part perfectly as they followed at a distance for over an hour. Rusty couldn’t decide whether she was truly awed by their surroundings or just a great actress. Whatever the answer, she didn’t slack when it came to her job. Maybe he’d underestimated her?
“The body language isn’t right for lovers,” she said as she studied Kelsey and the mystery man. “They stick close together, but he doesn’t get in her personal space. What do you think?”
What did Rusty think? He thought he was shit at reading body language. Now that he looked back at the interactions between Florence and Kirk, he realised there had been telltale signs—the way he’d touched the small of her back as he held the door open for her, the time he gave her his drink and got another for himself, that rainy afternoon when he’d insisted on fetching her horse from the pasture so she didn’t get wet. At the time, Rusty thought he was just being gentlemanly. The Steiners were old money, had a reputation for proper etiquette.
Florence had kept so many secrets.
But Erin… What you saw was what you got. Secretly, Rusty appreciated her lack of filter because at least he knew where he stood with her.
“I think you’re probably right,” he said.
But what did that mean for the investigation?