Page 47 of Protecting the Flame

“Kept going on about meeting the guys,” Hunter said. “I told him they wouldn’t be here.”

“Guys?” She eyed Hunter. “You mean, like friends? At the airstrip? Were you guys meeting up with someone?”

“Yeah,” Hunter said, and she saw the shift in the set of his face when he decided to say something other than what he’d intended. “Friends at the airstrip.”

He was lying. She’d done enough reporting to spot that. But why would Hunter lie about something like that? Instead of asking, she said, “Hunter, your dad was looking at a map right before we crashed. Why did he do that if we were instrument flying?”

She saw his eyes shutter. “I don’t know. There was a lot of turbulence, and we didn’t stick to the route.”

That set up a little ding-ding-ding. “How far off his flight plan were we?”

He gave an irritable shrug. “Beats me. I can take over in an emergency, you know, but he’s the pilot.”

So they might be well off whatever flight plan Burke had filed. When the engines stalled and Burke piloted the plane into a series of right-angle turns to avoid the mountains coming up fast as they shed altitude, they might also have been shoved even farther from their projected route.

Maybe that explains why we haven’t heard any planes or helicopters.A talon of dread dug at her chest. They might be looking in the wrong place.

That reminded her, too. They’d been so busy, neither she nor Will had thought to look very carefully before now other than to check a slot for papers in the pilot’s side door. That had been empty and the map Burke had been consulting must’ve blown away in the crash. “Hunter, are there other maps? Something that might tell us where we are?”

Again, she listened to the silence he let continue for a beat too long. “If there are, they’d be in there.” He gestured toward the center of the cockpit. “Underneath and behind the engine throttles. There’s a safe. He keeps a lot of paperwork and stuff in there. It’s locked, though,” he added as she panned her light in that direction. “I don’t have a key.”

“Okay.” The safe was maybe a foot long and as deep. It reminded her of a car’s glove compartment. A couple of whacks with a hammer might pop it open, or there might be a spare key in Burke’s cargo locker. On the other hand, the safe was a weird place to keep a map. She imagined a pilot might want that handy and not have to fumble around with a key. “Hunter, did your dad have a satellite phone?”

She saw the roll of his throat as he swallowed. “Yeah. He did.”

A sparkle of hope. “Do you remember the last time you saw it? Did he have it on him?” Actually, she was positive Burke had not. What she remembered was walking up with Will to where Burke and the others waited and the pilot, his cell in hand, saying, I was gonna give you people two minutes. He’d slipped his cell into a breast pocket, but there had been no satellite phone. She’d probably remember that because a sat phone was so big.

They were breaking open that safe if it was the last thing they did.

“Be back in a jiffy.” She turned to go. “I’ll bring some hot water so you can wash and brew up some tea.”

“Well, great,” he said. “What a pisser.”

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