reach his trapped leg to free it. But he didn’t want to unclip the belt and fall to the ground. No telling what damage that might do to his leg or what he might land on. He tilted his head up—or down, depending on how he looked at it—to see what was beneath him.
The plane had gone sideways and then turned over as it went down. A massive tree had peeled the top back like a can of tuna before dumping him and the Cessna onto the ground below. He supposed he should be grateful to that tree, since it had slowed his descent and saved him from diving nose first into the mud. The thick, now-broken branches had cushioned the fall and were now suspending the cockpit a few feet above the mud. All in all it was a miracle that he’d survived.
The muddy grass a few feet beneath his head appeared to be clear of debris. If he could work his leg free he could drop down without doing too much more damage. He used his free leg to kick at the metal trapping his right foot. Once, twice, three times. Another sharp pain in his calf was the price of freedom as the metal snapped and broke away. He pulled his knees up to his chest, put his left hand over his head to protect himself, then released his seat belt. He dropped and rolled, coming to rest on his backside.
He hurriedly shed his shirt and tossed it toward the plane as he shoved himself to his feet. After a quick look around to assess his surroundings, which basically consisted of cypress trees and saw grass, he clopped through the semi-firm ground to the one body of water he could see—a large puddle. Whenever it rained he imagined this whole area would probably be underwater. Right now it was a mixture of soft dirt and soggy bog. He dropped to his knees and sniffed the water to make sure it wasn’t jet fuel. The putrid smell wasn’t pleasant but at least it was biological, not man-made.
Hating the necessity of it, he cupped the water and used it to scrub his arms and chest and as much of his back as he could reach, ridding himself of the dangerous jet fuel that had coated his torso. Then he sat and yanked his pant leg up to see what, if anything, he could do about his injuries. Blood smeared his skin, but after washing it away he wasn’t all that worried. The bleeding had mostly stopped and the cuts didn’t look too deep. Except for one small puncture wound, mostly his leg had just been scraped, no worse than skinning a knee.
He dropped his pant leg into place. Now that he was out of danger of being roasted alive, time for his second priority. Getting the heck out of Dodge. He pulled his cell phone out of the clip on his waistband and sent up a silent prayer that the phone wasn’t broken as he typed his pass code to unlock it. But a few minutes later, after turning in every direction, holding the phone up above his head, then down toward the ground, the screen still showed the same thing.
Zero bars. No service. Useless.
He shoved it in the holder. Might as well face what he’d so far been avoiding. He drew his gaze up to his plane and groaned. Even though he’d known it was beyond being salvaged from what he’d glimpsed while hanging from the pilot’s seat, seeing the whole thing now was devastating.
The fixed landing gear pointed up at the sky. One wing was completely sheared off. He didn’t see it anywhere. The other, still attached, was snared in a pile of broken branches. The tail had snapped off and had landed in the mud behind the fuselage. He shook his head in disgust. Not because of the money this would cost him. He could easily absorb the loss. But to see a piece of beautiful machinery destroyed like that was akin to a Monet being wadded up and tossed in the trash. It was a damn shame, a waste.
He shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky, a beautiful, bright blue unmarred by clouds, with no sign of the mysterious mist that had engulfed the plane right before the engine died. Even if his Mayday call hadn’t gone through, that sky would still soon be dotted with other planes, or helicopters, searching the marsh for him. Because even though he was often lazy about filing flight plans, his assistant religiously checked behind him and would have insured the plan was submitted.
Yes, instead of heading straight to the Naples airport and then driving from there to Mystic Glades, he’d made a slight detour to get an aerial view of Mystic Glades first. But that had only taken him a few miles out of his planned flight path. As long as the transponder in his plane was working, a rescue crew would be able to zero in on his location.
Transponder. Was it working? It was part of the instrument panel that had gone on the fritz. But the system had built-in redundancies to insure it could survive most crashes and send out a signal if it received a ping from a transmitter, like the kind a rescue plane would send. He studied the wreckage, looking for any telltale signs of smoke. There were none. After waiting a few more minutes, he decided to chance a closer look. It should be safe, as long as he kept an eye out for any warning signs of an impending fire—and stayed away from the jet fuel.
He worked his way to the cockpit, approaching from the far side this time since it seemed fuel-free there. The instrument panel was a disaster. No way to tell if the transponder was working or not. If it wasn’t, that was more of an inconvenience than a concern. It wasn’t like he was in an uninhabited area. Mystic Glades couldn’t be more than two, three miles away.
Of course, the trick was making sure he headed in the right direction. But he could use the sun to figure out which way to go. Navigating by sun or stars was a rusty skill, but one that had been ingrained in him during his pilot training in the navy. Still, there was no point in risking getting lost if a rescue effort was under way. Which, based on the anticipated arrival time in his flight plan, should be soon.
Knowing the National Transportation Safety Board would immediately take possession of the plane and site for their investigation into the cause of the crash, he figured he might as well take advantage of his time alone to do some of his own investigating.
Getting to the engine compartment wasn’t as difficult as he’d anticipated, since the access panels had been peeled back like the top of the plane. Since the plane was upside down, he ducked down and looked for anything obvious. Most of the engine was intact. Only a few parts had been ripped away or crushed on impact. Everything looked normal.
Except for the electrical tape.
What the...? There were two long pieces of tape, or rather, one long piece that had been burned in two. He pulled out his cell phone and took some pictures, then zoomed the screen. Wait, no, that couldn’t be. He shoved the phone in its holder.
Bracing himself on a twisted piece of metal, he followed the piece of tape. One end was attached to the edge of the engine compartment. The other was wrapped around a bundle of wires—a crucial bundle that provided power to instrument panels, including the transponder and the engine. Someone had pulled those wires free of their normal harness and used the tape to hold them in place. Which pretty much guaranteed that during flight, with the heat and vibration from the engine, the tape would fail. The wires would have dropped down onto the hot manifold. If the heat seared through their protective coating, that would have caused a catastrophic failure. Judging by the burn spots on the wires, that’s exactly what had happened.
Since electrical tape wasn’t standard equipment in any engine compartment, especially a brand-new plane, he could only reach one logical conclusion.
Someone had tried to kill him.
* * *
AMBER CROUCHED BEHIND a large fern that protected her from the sharp ends of a massive saw palmetto, totally mesmerized by the way the sun slanted off the golden skin of the impressive male specimen thirty feet away. She didn’t know why he’d taken off his shirt, but she certainly wasn’t complaining. The way his muscles rippled beneath his skin as he walked was fascinating, and an amusing contrast to his dark blue dress pants and expensive-looking but thoroughly ruined dress shoes. Since his footprints were the only ones she’d found after she’d reached the plane crash site, he must be the pilot. And the lack of bodies in and around
