Page 38 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
“Yes,” Russ and Clare answered at the same time.
She looped them vertically like a car on a Tilt-A-Whirl, the plane going faster and faster, the propellers shrieking, and then they leveled out and shot away toward the east, twice as high and rising fast. He heard Clare take a deep breath. Then another.
“I feel sick,” Knox said.
“Bag’s in the door next to you.” Clare was still professionally calm. “Everyone else okay?”
Russ and Terrance both answered yes.
“Paul, I want you to take a look at the wing and the side of the plane. Tell me if you see anything that looks like damage or leaking.”
Terrance pressed his face against the window. “Nothing off on this side.”
Clare flicked a switch and then twisted in her seat to do the same visual inspection on her side of the craft. “Okay, I can’t see anything on the portside. Good.”
Russ glanced toward Knox. She was pale and damp, but so far hadn’t tossed her cookies. They flew in silence for another ten minutes before Russ could see Long Lake stretching out beneath them.The plane slowly curved to line up with the narrow southern end of the lake, the tilt barely discernible in the cabin. Clare flew well to the south, so their descent was gradual. The float plane touched down on the water with a few bumps, but Russ had had far rougher landings in large commercial jets.
At the pier, Terrance leapt out and secured the lines before opening the door on Knox’s side. She staggered down, letting the ranger catch her and help her up the pier. Russ eased himself out after her and waited for Clare to finish in the cockpit.
She wiggled out over the passenger seat and jumped onto the pier. Russ held out his arms and she went to him. As soon as he folded her tight against him, she began to shake violently. The cold air streaming off the lake felt like a blessing, and he held her hard, pressing his cheek against her hair, murmuring nothing words that meant,Holding on. Not letting go.
Eventually, she stilled and pressed her hand to his chest. He released her. “Thanks.” She smiled crookedly. “I haven’t had a combat flashback in a long while.” She wiped her wet face. “’Course, I haven’t had anyone firing at my aircraft since Iraq.”
Russ nodded. “Being in the middle of a war tends to do that to people. You think you’ve put it all behind you, but the right trigger…”
“And you’re back there all over again.” She breathed deeply. “I need to inspect the plane. Then I’m going to call Mother and Daddy and see if they’re okay with me staying overnight. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”
“Oh, no.” He threw his hand against his forehead dramatically. “A night alone with my wife in a remote inn with no baby. What shall I do?”
She laughed, which was what he was shooting for. “Go on, get me another coffee. I’ll meet you at the truck, and we can all discuss what we found when we’re back at your inn.”
7.
“First off, I don’t know what y’all were planning, but I’ve got to report getting shot at to the nearest FAA air control. Which I’m guessing is Plattsburgh.” Clare rocked back in the rocking chair she had commandeered in the inn’s living room.
“Why didn’t you call it in when we were in the plane?” Hadley had showered and changed as soon as they had arrived, and was looking her usual sleek self again. Clare couldn’t help noticing the glances the ranger kept sending her way.
“We were too low for my radio signal to get past the High Peaks. Probably too far as well. I can phone them instead, but it’s got to be soon, because that’s a danger to aviation.”
“Just to get all possibilities on the table, could it have been an SOS instead of hostile fire?” Russ had changed from his coffee-stained shirt into a knit Henley she’d gotten him for his birthday. She was trying, with mixed success, to wean him from his all-flannel uniform.
“That would have been three blasts close together. I heard, I think, two?” Paul looked to Clare for confirmation. “Although, to be fair, I was mostly focusing on not passing out.”
“I think this is a job for Occam’s razor. You know there’s a militia group out there. They may be dangerous, and for sure they don’t want to be found. And Paul’s uncle’s truck was in proximity to the camp we saw. The simplest explanation is that we stumbled across the neo-Nazis and they panicked.”
“It was so dumb, though.” Hadley shook her head. “Shooting at a plane is guaranteed to get you noticed. Unless…” She bit her lip. “Unless the person who fired into the air wanted to get attention.”
“Maybe.” Paul sounded cynical. “But most racists aren’t overendowed with brains. We can’t write off dumb.”
Hadley frowned. “Will the Department of Environmental Conservation send more personnel to help? Now you’ve found Pierre’s truck?”
“We need to confirm that’s Pierre’s truck,” Russ said.
“But I saw—”
“You sawatruck,” Russ cut the ranger off. “Keep in mind, we haven’t found where the militia is keeping their ride out of the woods. That truck could just as easily be theirs.”
Paul sagged back in his seat. “Oh. Yeah.”
