Epilogue #2
“Honey, I could barely land this thing here with plenty of room. If anything goes wrong, we’re dead.” He pushed the sunglasses up on his head, revealing eyes greener than the sharpest emerald.
A vise gripped her throat, an invisible one, and she breathed deeply to calm herself. “You’re not a pilot?”
He lifted one powerful shoulder in a tough-guy shrug. “Not really.”
Her spine straightened on its own. “You don’t have a pilot’s license?”
His flash of a grin was as charming as it was unexpected. “Nope.”
Her shoulders snapped back. If he said one more word, her body would be at full attention whether she liked it or not. “Then what the hell are you doing flying that thing?”
“We got notice in Knife’s Edge that you were out here. Somebody had to come get you. I was the only one sober enough.” He rubbed the scruff across his angled jaw.
“Sober enough?” She backed a step away. The sparkle in his green eyes caught her. Was he messing with her?
He studied her face and then gave another grunt she couldn’t decipher. “Listen, Agent.”
“Ophelia,” she protested, her stomach doing odd flip-flops that had nothing to do with her fear of flying.
“I’d like to keep your title in mind.” He pulled the door open wider.
“A hungover pilot is the least of your worries in an Alaskan winter. Another late but dangerous snowfall has about another day to arrive, and winds will make flying impossible. Darkness is gonna fall for months—for good, it’ll seem.
You want me to take you back to Anchorage right now. Trust me.”
Trust him? Yeah, right. “I’m not getting into a plane with you.” Being unwanted was nothing new to her, yet her chest chilled even more.
He might’ve winced, but the hard planes in the stone that made up his spectacular face barely moved. “I’m your only choice unless you want to wait for spring. I doubt you know how to hunt, so you’ll starve in that little warming hut before you freeze. Well, probably.”
She grabbed her temper with sheer will and shoved her glasses onto her head. “There must be another pilot and another plane coming at some point.”
“No other plane and no other pilot. Probably for months.” He looked up at the startling blue sky. “Winter is a month late, so it’s gonna come in fast. Today.”
She drew her phone free of her jacket and shook it. No service.
He chuckled. “Where would you put a cell tower around here?”
Good point. She slid the phone back into the warmth. “How intoxicated are you?”
“I’m fine. Also, the winds are better, and the runway’s much bigger in Anchorage, so how about I take you there? Cell service actually works there all the time, and in Knife’s Edge, it’s spotty—to say the least. It’s already December, and you don’t want to miss the holidays with family, do you?”
Her temples began to ache. “I’m fine. Really. We should go.”
“You should reconsider.” His voice crashed beyond gruff to nearly raw. “Trust me. Knife’s Edge during wintertime is no place for a city girl.”
She’d stopped being a girl a long time ago.
He’d come just to make her return to the city?
Not once in her life had she backed down from a challenge.
However, this one may result in her crashing into a mountain.
Either way, she had to get into that tiny plane with him, so she’d continue on her mission, and it wasn’t like she had anybody to worry about for the holidays.
“This woman can handle it. Please take me—safely—to Knife’s Edge. ”
His grunt failed to provide reassurance. “It’s your mistake to make.” He leaned in to tug a seat harness out of the way, bringing warmth and the scent of something new. Spicy, male, and undefinable. “Our window to fly is short, and the drinks are already lining up at the tavern. Gotta go. Now.”
Could he get any grumpier? “You had better not get me killed,” she murmured before she could stop herself.
He sighed. “Get in, Ophelia. The only thing to do with fear is to confront it. Every damn time.”
The man sounded like he knew what he was talking about, although sometimes running from fear was the smartest thing to do. Obviously. She accepted his hand and climbed up, settling into the surprisingly comfortable leather seat.
Without waiting for an invitation, he leaned inside, grasped the chest harness, and pulled it over her head, securing it tightly with the buckle at her waist, his thick hair brushing her arm, and his hand millimeters from her breast.
She blinked, her body instantly warming.
He slowly lifted his head, his eyes mere inches from hers.
She stopped breathing. Again. Their gazes met, and it was a moment.
One of those inexplicable, real, human connections that’s felt and not reasoned.
She didn’t try to find a word to say because there wasn’t one.
Awareness, the same one she shared, darkened his eyes.
The moment passed as quickly as it had landed.
He stepped back and securely shut her door before striding around to climb into the pilot’s seat, making the entire craft hitch and fill with that spicy winter scent.
Silently, he handed over headphones, which she quickly donned, not liking the sense of being unbalanced.
“Whose plane is this?” She spoke into the microphone of the headset.
He fiddled with a bunch of levers. “A guy named Trapper Matt owned the plane and died three years ago at the age of a hundred. He left all of his belongings to the town of Knife’s Edge, so I guess it’s the town’s.
It’ll be put in storage for the winter as soon as our late winter begins, which might be tomorrow. ”
Hopefully the town performed regular maintenance on the craft. “Who are you?”
“Brock Osprey. Temporary pilot today.”
She stiffened. “Osprey?”
“Yep.” The plane instantly started rolling down the ice, hitching and wobbling.
That last name was not a good coincidence, by any means. Her voice wavered, and she planted a hand against the door. “You’re one of Hank Osprey’s adopted kids.” She only had Brock’s name and the fact that he’d served as a Navy SEAL in her slim FBI file and hoped to have his military records soon.
“Yep.”
Just wonderful. “Hank’s murder is one of the cases I’m here to investigate.” The most important one, and her main reason for heading to the small town. Another chill skittered down her spine. Why had she left the gun in the pack?
Brock yanked the levers back, and the craft lifted unsteadily into the air.
A gust of wind hit them, pushing them sideways.
Dark clouds rolled in from the west, visible from their vantage point off the ground.
“At the moment, an old death is the least of your worries.” He yanked the stick, and the plane continued to bump through the air, climbing higher.
“Hank died about a year ago. That’s not an old death.”
Brock grunted. Again. “A year is an eon when you live in the middle of nowhere.” A gust of wind shoved them to the side.
“Maybe, we, well, should we wait until the storm passes?” she whispered, even her lips trembling.
Another wind gust slashed them, and he tightened his hold on the stick. “The storm never passes, sweetheart. Not in Knife’s Edge.”
She started to ask more questions when a large facility to the east caught her attention. A massive antenna field, satellite dishes, and grids of transmitters spread out from a sprawling concrete building and covered at least fifty acres. “What in the world is that place?”
“That’s the Electromagnetic Vibrational Experiment,” he said, spelling out the letters with an almost casual tone. “We call it EVE. It began as a government project, but a private corporation took over years ago. They study the ionosphere.”
She turned to him again, nodding to keep him talking.
He sighed but appeased her. “They only let the mail and supply plane that comes twice a month in the winter land on their runway—when it can get in. Sometimes it can take months with our weather. I’m surprised you haven’t heard the conspiracy theories about that place that run the gamut between manipulating the weather to mind control experiments.
It’s all bunk. The facility just conducts research. So they say.”
She shifted to look out the window. “Can we fly closer?”
“No. Restricted airspace, except for their own supply plane.” He made another adjustment. The wind battered the small craft.
“Restricted airspace in the Alaskan wilderness? I do love a good puzzle.” She had to figure out this one.
“That isn’t a puzzle, and it’s not what you’re here to do,” he said mildly.
Interesting. Was that a warning? She switched topics to throw him off-balance. “Who do you think murdered Hank Osprey? You must’ve cared about him, right?”
“Yes, and nobody murdered him. Nobody wanted Hank dead.” Brock’s tone remained calm, but tension showed in his firmer grip on the stick.
Oh, he definitely knew more than he let on. “Don’t you want to know for sure? I will find out what happened.” Whether Brock and his town liked it or not, she excelled at digging for the truth—and this marked her last chance to keep her job. She couldn’t give up.
Brock gave one of those grunts she couldn’t decipher. “That’s your choice.” His face might as well have been carved from the jagged rocks around them. “Hold on. We have to drop fast. It’s going to be a rough landing.”