Page 62 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
“Ah. Terribly sorry to hear about your friends.”
“Might not be anything to be terribly sorry about.” Magnus quirked an eyebrow. “Reports vary.”
Before Oz could elaborate, David Auberon, Annette’s fiancé, walked in, looking over his shoulder. “Damn. Bob just scuttled past me like someone singed his ear hair.” He spotted Nadia. “Which, I just realized, makes sense. Is he still throwing half-full cans of Coke into recycling?”
“Perhaps not.” Nadia folded her fingers into small fists, then cracked her knuckles. “Time will tell.”
David fixed himself a cup of coffee, dumped a glug of maple syrup into it, then walked behind Annette’s chair and dropped a hand to her shoulder while he sucked down his homemade caffeine sugar bomb. She reached back and squeezed it (his hand, not the bomb) without looking, still skimming files, and Oz smiled and looked away. Once David and Annette stopped with the “we’re not into each other at all oh wait maybe we are” bullshit, they went from colleagues to live-in mates pretty quickly. Like, speed of sound quickly. Now it was hard to picture either of them as single, for all it was only six months ago.
Where will Lila and I be in six months?
Nowhere, dumbass. The thing you’re worried is happening? Isn’t happening. Old wives’ tale. Not to mention—stop me if you’ve already heard this—you betrayed her! It’s weird that I have to keep reminding you.
He shook off the distracting thoughts to refocus on the case. “This is David Auberon. He’s an investigator who works with IPA, usually tracking down kids.”
“Nice t’meet you, lad,” Magnus said automatically, with the polite air of a man who wanted to be somewhere else.
“We were just bringing Mr. Berne up to speed,” Oz added, indicating the files on the table.
“Magnus, please.”
“Oh, look at you with your first case, Oz. Adorable!” Nadia beamed and turned to Magnus: “Oz comes to us from the accounting floor, the one that hums at all hours with the sound of keyboard strokes and spreadsheet shuffling and all the occupants suffer from an abundance of paper cuts and never see the sun.”
“Only two of those are true, Nadia. Let’s get back to it.” Oz tapped the picture of the crash scene for emphasis. “Magnus, as you probably know, Sally’s family moved to Saint Paul last month.”
“Aye, from Boston.”
“Given that her mother had a terminal illness, it’s a safe assumption that they wanted to be close to United’s oncology specialists while having the option of the Mayo Clinic. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here. And for some reason last week, they needed a plane, so they…?”
“Reached out t’me,” Magnus replied promptly. “Told me they had a project needed looking into. I told ’em they could have whatever they needed.”
“So you just handed over the keys?” Oz prompted. “Or whatever?”
“Aye, lad, Cessnas have keys, and yes, I handed them over. Sue and I’ve known each other since Shakopee. She c’n have anything she wants.”
Oz took a few seconds to digest that. “The SAS thing? You guys were there?”
“Aye.”
“I loathe that acronym. Call them what they truly are,” Nadia sniffed. “Unattractive, racist, species-ist imbeciles who want to destroy every Stable they see, don’t know how to dress, and don’t care to learn. Why are master race–types so often cursed with unfortunate facial features?”
“A mystery for another day.”Shakopee. Huh.That was interesting, and it explained why Magnus was Sally’s godfather: he and Smalls had been through war together. Or, as some liked to describe Shakopee, a pathetic coup sprung by reactive morons who got what they deserved. “Oz had been a teenager when it happened, but Mama Mac had plenty to say about it at the time. This week was the tenth anniversary of the debacle.”
“So your friends borrowed your plane, which crashed.”
“In the interest of full disclosure, while I considered Sue to be a sister, Sam and I were never friends.”
“Fair enough. So they borrowed your plane and it crashed. And then?”
“When they didn’t land, I reached out. Turns out they dropped off the radar just before crossing the Iowa–Minnesota border. Took a couple of days for them to find the plane. I was told there were no witnesses to the crash, only the wreckage. No one saw it go down.”
“Is that normal?”
Magnus nodded. “Unfortunately. Even when you know a plane went down and roughly where, you can’t always find the crash site. It’s not like when a semi goes missing. A plane can end up anywhere. There are wrecks all over the world that simply rust away. Sue and Sam went down in a field just outside the Albert Lea/Scarville area. The woman who owns the property uses the farmhouse and buildings but rents out her fields. She was showing the land to a prospective tenant when they found the crash.”
“Are we assuming pilot error?” Annette asked.
“I think assuming has been enough of a hindrance to this investigation. But, Nadia, would you mind following up with Rochester International?”
