Page 4 of Red Boar's Baby

Then he cursed under his breath and put the phone in his pocket.

Too stupid, still playing this game after all these years. One of these fake dates needed to be the last one. They’d engineered a fake relationship, and somehow it turned into a whole ongoing fake friends-with-benefits situation that was probably stopping both of them from getting on with their lives.

Maybe what we need is a fake breakup, so we can both find someone else. Someone who wants the same things out of life.

Except he didn’t want anyone else. He wanted Diana. He had learned long ago that he couldn’t have her, but it didn’t stop the wanting.

He shook his head and broke into a jog, then a lope. Screw it. Forget the car; he could pick it up later. He’d jog from here to the office. It was about ten or twelve miles, give or take a little. He’d done longer runs than that—not generally on a workday, but it wasn’t too hot. It would give him a chance to clear his head, get himself straightened out, and think about work rather than Diana Reid.

Not thinking about Diana was a good plan. A great plan, even. Too bad it never worked.

CHAPTER2

Above the eroded stone pillars,pinyons and sycamores of the Chiricahua massif, a helicopter hovered under the control of Diana Reid’s strong, capable hands.

“That’s B6 on the search grid cleared,” she said to the man in the seat beside her, who nodded and marked the map on his knees. “Base, B6 clear, moving on to B7.”

“Negative, Rescue 22.” It was Caroline on the radio, Diana’s favorite dispatcher out of the Cochise County sheriff’s office. “We have a report of smoke sighted in D9. Could be nothing, a hiker, who knows, but you’re the nearest. Check it out.”

“Roger, Base.” Diana switched to private intra-helicopter communications on the headset and turned to her copilot. “Luis, hand me a water bottle and a granola bar. It’s been a while since lunch.”

Luis made a show of shock. “You’re staying hydrated without me having to nag you? Where’s Di and what did you do with her?”

Diana snorted. She set her course and planted the bottle between her knees. “Got a hot date tonight, if all this works out for the best. If not, I need to keep my strength up.”

“You still dating that asshole over at the SCB?”

“Hey!” Diana said. Her annoyance was genuine.Shegot to carp about Costa not keeping up his end of the strange deal they’d made years ago, but it was like making fun of family; you didn’t let other people do it. “He’s fine. I’m fine.”

“I’m starting to think you made up this boyfriend just to keep the single guys at the station off your back.”

That hit too close to home. “I wouldn’t want to steal you away from Alvero,” she said, naming Luis’s husband. “Costa might try, though. I can bring him in one of these days and introduce you. He’ll get along great with the rest of you shitheads.”

Luis flipped her off and tore open the granola bar wrapper for her so she could eat without needing both hands.

Luis was a paramedic, a middle-aged former biker with a competent air of “been there, seen it all” and a no-nonsense attitude that made him one of her favorite partners for this sort of work. He was 5’5”, shorter than her, but built like a tank; she had once seen him wrestle a delirious six-foot hiker to the ground, throw the guy over his shoulder, and haul him to the helo.

And he was a shifter, which could also come in handy. When it was just the two of them on a callout, they could be completely candid discussing the possibilities—should an S&R for a lost tourist involve looking for deer tracks as well as human? Would it be easier to approach a frightened child as an animal or a human? Diana’s shift form was a roadrunner, not exactly cute and cuddly, but Luis shifted into a panda bear, which could not have been a better distraction for scared, crying little kids if they’d planned it that way.

No kids in this situation—hopefully. They really didn’t have much information on the missing flight. The plane was a four-seater from a charter company that had filed a flight plan to Alamagordo, New Mexico, and left at first light. It was way off course down here.

Given the givens and the closeness of the Mexican border, an illicit stop along the way to pick up something (drugs? people?) was a likely option. But there had been thunderstorms to the north last night, so the plane and its pilot might have gone south to avoid them, or simply lost their way. An inexperienced pilot could definitely get lost in the torturous Southwest desert landscape, with its many similar-looking canyons, arroyos, and mountains. GPS had cut down on those sorts of incidents, but it still happened.

Diana was with the National Park Service, not law enforcement per se. But policing the parks meant dealing with a lot more than litterers at times. In a situation like this, she knew she had to be prepared for everything from a tragic scene with civilian casualties, to armed and dangerous drug gangs.

“Hey, I see it,” Luis said through a mouthful of granola bar. He pointed. “Smoke on your nine.”

“Gotcha.” Diana changed course. “Base, we have eyes on the smoke.”

They were climbing into steeper country. She flew over a ridge covered with the eroded stone columns called hoodoos, a characteristic feature of the unique and eerie Chiricahua countryside. Those were going to make it hellaciously difficult to land, if the plane had gone down in an area with a lot of them, even if she could find an open space without too many trees.

As she navigated the updrafts over the ridge, she found her mind drifting back to Costa, considerably against her will. Maybe she should have just said no. One of these times, she ought to say no and let the fallout happen. But she would enjoy the date, she suspected. And she liked his family.

“Watch out for that?—”

“I see it,” she muttered, steering the helo around a pinnacle of rock. “You just keep your eyes on the ground.”

“You keep pitching this bird around like a boat in the high seas, you’ll have my granola bar to clean up,” said Luis, whose stomach was as solid in a wind-tossed helicopter as any sailor’s. “Oh, hi there—off to your right, that is, two o’clock—see it?”

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