“THE PLANE’S BEEN found,” Leah announced as she approached the three Flynn brothers, her arms filled with sandwiches.
“Hallelujah!” Connor said, rising from his seat on a tree stump.
“Are they all right?” Devon asked, jumping up from a stone where he’d been perched.
Leah saw the look of hope as Aiden turned to her and watched the light in his eyes die when he saw her somber expression.
“What did you find out?” he asked.
Before answering either man, Leah handed out the ham and cheese sandwiches, knowing the three men had missed several meals. It was a sign of just how hungry they were that all three had already taken bites when she said, “The Twin Otter’s a burned-out shell.”
Aiden stopped chewing and stared.
She continued, “The good news is that no bodies were visible near the wreckage.” That didn’t mean they weren’t burned beyond recognition. But Leah didn’t want to put that thought in anyone’s mind.
“Is there any sign of them?” Aiden asked. “Surely they would have stayed by the plane.”
Leah focused her gaze on his anxious blue eyes. “The whole forest had been turned to ashes for a mile around the crash site. There’s no way of knowing whether they escaped before the fire came through.”
Leah wondered if her eyes looked as desolate as Aiden’s. She gritted her teeth to still her quivering chin, then clenched her hands into fists to keep from reaching out to comfort the man she’d once loved…and now despised with a passion equal to the betrayal she felt.
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “the plane is miles from the closest Forest Service road. We can only drive so far. We’ll have to hike in the rest of the way to search for them.”
“You keep saying ‘we,’ ” Aiden said. “Does that mean you’re coming with us?”
“I want to be there. Taylor might need me.”
“How do we know they’re not both dead inside the plane?” Connor said.
Leah watched Aiden visibly wince at Connor’s statement.
“If that’s the case, we’ll know soon enough,” he said.
“I need to go check on things at the ranch,” Connor said. He was the only Flynn brother with children at home, and his ranch was set up as a haven where returning veterans could escape for a little R & R—rest and recuperation—before either going back to war or heading home to their families. “Keep me in the loop while I’m gone.”
“Will do,” Aiden replied.
“By the way, did Matt catch up to you?” Connor asked Leah.
“He’s on his way home. His daughter just showed up at Kingdom Come, after spending six weeks visiting her mother in Texas. He said he’ll be back on the hunt as soon as he checks on her.”
Devon blurted, “Pippa’s back?”
Leah nodded. Matt’s teenage daughter had been so unhappy at Kingdom Come that she’d run away and ended up living with Devon, who’d offered her a room in his cabin in the mountains.
Leah continued, “It seems there’s a brand-new fire burning in the Bridger-Teton forest, which puts it on the outskirts of your ranch, Devon. It’s still small, and they’re hoping to keep it under control. Whether they can is anybody’s guess.”
Devon turned to Aiden and said, “I’d better head home, in case I have to round up my cattle and trailer my horses someplace safe.”
“And maybe see Pippa while you’re at it?” Aiden said.
“She doesn’t want anything to do with me,” Devon replied. “She made that clear when she left for Texas.”
“But she’s back,” Connor pointed out.
Leah saw the look of longing on Devon’s face. But all he said was, “I’ll rejoin the search the instant I can.”
Aiden focused his gaze on each of his brothers in turn and said, “I’ll let both of you know if we find out anything.” And then, to Devon, “Let us know if you need help relocating your livestock.”
“Will do.”
Leah watched as Aiden and his brothers exchanged hugs—a bump of shoulders and a pat on the back that, nevertheless, conveyed how much they cared for one another—before Connor and Devon headed toward the road where they’d left their pickups. As they passed her, the two men each touched a respectful fingertip to the brim of his hard hat.
“Good luck,” Connor said.
“Take care of yourselves,” Devon said.
Once they were gone, Aiden murmured, “I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the site of the crash.”
“I’m guessing at least one of them is hurt,” Leah said. “It has to be Brian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If Taylor were injured, Brian could carry her out.”
“And if Brian’s injured?”
Leah shrugged. “Taylor’s strong. Maybe she managed to drag him to safety.” A shiver of foreboding ran down her spine, and she spoke to counter it. “I’m betting they’re lost in the forest and will be back with a story to tell.”
Aiden took off his hard hat, shoved his sleeve across his sweaty forehead, then put his hat back on. “I hope you’re right. We’d better get busy organizing a ground search. How big of an area are we talking about?”
Leah pulled a Forest Service Teton Wilderness map out of her back pocket. It had been marked to show the remote area where the fire still burned. “One of the supervisors gave me this.” She laid it out on the stone where Devon had been sitting.
She pointed to an X on the map and said, “This is where the Otter went down.”
“Oh, my God,” Aiden muttered. “That’s the middle of nowhere. How much terrain did you say is burned out around the wreckage?”
Leah met his gaze, her eyes bleak. “I was told the plane is surrounded by charred trees and vegetation for a mile in every direction.”
“Then how did they escape?”
Leah shrugged. “The fire must have come through after the crash.”
“And no one saw any bodies on the ground?”
Leah shook her head. “But bodies might be hard to see from the air in that scorched landscape, especially if Taylor and Brian aren’t together, or if one or both of them is inside the wreckage.”
“Brian’s good in an emergency. The only question is whether he was physically able, after they crashed, to do what needed to be done, especially if they had to escape a fast-moving fire. That appears to be the case. Otherwise, they would have stayed near the plane.”
“If they’re up and on the move,” Leah said, “why weren’t they spotted by the helicopter that discovered the Otter? Or one of the planes out there searching?”
When Aiden reached out as though to take her in his arms and comfort her, Leah gasped and took a step backward. She ended up stumbling and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulders to hold her upright.
“Let me go!”
“Leah, I—”
“Let me go, or I’ll scream.” Leah writhed and squirmed, repelling Aiden’s touch precisely because she yearned to be held in his strong arms, yearned to feel his bristled cheek against her own, yearned to have his hands moving over her body. She’d needed all her willpower to resist the urge to listen to his excuses and forgive him. She didn’t know how much time she could spend with him without breaking down entirely.
Aiden let go of her and held his hands up, palms out. In a harsh voice he said, “You’re free. Settle down.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to settle down!”
“Then don’t act like a five-year-old. Would you rather I let you fall on your ass?”
“That’s exactly what you did, Aiden. Dumped me upside down and tossed me sideways. I hope you’re happy, because I’m not! I trusted you. I lo—” She cut herself off, crossed her arms, and stared at him with her lips pressed flat.
“Please, Leah. Let me explain.”
Leah glared at Aiden through narrowed eyes. “No. Not now. Not ever. Not ever again will I trust a Flynn. Especially not with my heart. If you bring up this subject again, you’ll be searching for your brother by yourself.”
Aiden dropped his hands to his sides and his chin to his chest. His shoulders slumped. When he met her gaze again, the pain in his eyes made her stomach knot. She hardened her heart and said, “Where do you want to start?”
“If there was any way on this earth to escape the furnace that burned that forest to ash, Brian will have found it. I suggest we start on the perimeter of the burned area, where there’s still green forest.”
“I have another idea I’d like to suggest.”
“I’m listening,” Aiden said.
“What if they didn’t go down with the plane?”
“What do you mean? What other possibility—”
“Didn’t you tell me earlier that Brian was supposed to jump the fire but ended up being the spotter instead?”
Aiden nodded. “I see where you’re going. He probably boarded the plane with his parachute. Are we presuming the spotter’s parachute never made it onto the plane, because the spotter never showed up?”
“What I’m suggesting is that Brian could have parachuted out of the plane before it crashed.”
Aiden frowned. “Without Taylor? Not a chance.”
“What if they jumped together with one parachute?”
“A tandem jump?” Aiden said. “Without the right gear that would be pretty risky. A Ram Air is intended for one person.”
“Put yourself in their shoes,” Leah argued. “The plane is going down. Taylor can’t find a safe place to land because they’re surrounded by mountains and sharply angled gullies. Brian could probably rig something to get the two of them down with one chute, don’t you think?”
“I can check with the jumpers and see if Brian boarded the plane wearing his chute. That’ll tell us if jumping was even an option.”
“I wonder why they haven’t contacted us on Brian’s radio,” Leah mused.
“Maybe it was damaged,” Aiden said. “Even if it wasn’t, his Bendix King doesn’t have much range without a repeater in the area, and it’s useless in mountainous terrain. Where was the last contact with the plane?”
Leah pointed to a red dot. “This is where Taylor gave their last position.”
Aiden drew a line with his finger between the red spot where Taylor had last radioed her position to the X where the Twin Otter had crashed. “If they jumped somewhere along that line, we’ll to need to search a lot of territory to find them. How far is it from one point to the other?”
The firefighter who’d handed Leah the map had already made the calculation, which she shared with Aiden. “Exactly 17.4 miles.”
“That makes the search area—” Leah began.
“Too damn big,” Aiden interrupted.
“We can search more efficiently if we start with the plane’s location and move out from there,” Leah said.
“Unless they jumped.”
“The fire’s still burning at the last location Taylor gave us on the radio,” Leah said. “The fire is out where the plane crashed.”
“I guess that settles that,” Aiden said. “How many experienced searchers can we get?”
“You want to do a grid search?”
“I don’t see a better way, do you?”
A grid search involved a long line of people, about twenty feet apart from one another, moving forward slowly and deliberately through an area. Leah knew about grid searches because she’d become a trained volunteer and participated in previous searches for missing backcountry skiers and hikers.
She also knew the math: twenty-five people to the mile with twenty feet between them meant 924 man hours. A trained team could cover one square mile in 3.5 hours. That meant they had to figure out a way to reduce the search area to make a realistic search possible.
“Why don’t we take a look ourselves before we organize a larger search?” Leah suggested. “Especially since the area is so remote.”
“All right,” Aiden agreed. “Meanwhile, I’ll get Dad to expand the air search.”
“I’ll speak to King as well. Will the Forest Service even allow us in there with the fire still burning?”
“I don’t intend to ask,” Aiden said. “That way they can’t say no.”
Leah smiled grimly. That sounded like the Flynn way of doing things. It was similar to the Grayhawk way of getting from point A to point B without a hitch. “Finish your sandwich,” she said. “It may be a while before we have time to eat again.”
“Leah—”
“I’m going to say this one more time. I don’t want to hear explanations or apologies, Aiden. I don’t want you to say a word to me that doesn’t have to do with finding Taylor and Brian. Is that understood?”
She watched a muscle bunch in his jaw, watched his lips turn down, watched his eyes fill with frustration.
All he said was “Understood.”