over and stroked her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re on the ground now.” He tried to sound reassuring, but they were far from being, literally or figuratively, out of the woods. He stood up from his seat and took a step toward the cargo area. “You can get out from my side.”
“And what are you going to do?”
Her accusatory tone got under his skin. He was an honest man. “There’s something I need to locate.”
“You said yourself this plane could catch on fire.”
He had no time to argue with her. “I’ll explain later. Get outside and tell me if you can assess why we went down.” He didn’t mean to sound harsh, but time was of the essence.
She scowled but shifted over to his seat and pushed open the door.
Jesse scanned the cargo area. He flung open several storage drawers, not finding anything that looked like a hard drive. Maybe Lee had taped it underneath the control panel. He hurried toward the nose of the plane and ran his hands underneath the control panel. Nothing. He flung open a storage box behind the copilot seat and rifled through the contents. Not there.
The pilot-side door screeched open and Abigail stuck her head in. “There are flames shooting out.”
He stopped his mad search long enough to register what she had said. A thunderous noise that sounded as though it was contained within a bubble surrounded him. A small explosion from the fire. More, bigger explosions might follow.
He needed to find that hard drive.
Smoke filled the interior of the plane. He coughed. His vision blurred.
He felt Abigail grab his hand and drag him out of the plane.
When his vision cleared, he saw a wall of flames by the plane’s engine. Smoke began to rise in the air. He coughed, feeling a sense of defeat.
He hadn’t found the hard drive. The cartel would be set on revenge even more because of their loss of product. He wasn’t sure they had fired shots at the airplane. It didn’t seem like they would risk the drugs burning up, but then again, if he got away in the plane they’d lose the drugs for sure and he could identify the three men.
Abigail rose to her feet. “It looks like it’s too wet for the trees to catch on fire. The fact that it’s been a wet spring will keep the fire from spreading.” She still sounded shaken and upset.
Already the fire was dying down. That single burst of flame must have consumed all the oxygen and fuel. Part of the plane would still be intact when the flames died down, though the interior had filled with smoke.
Smoke rose up in the air. Probably not enough to be noticed by anyone in Fort Madison, the little town they’d hiked in from. The three men who had been after them would see it and know where they were located. They hadn’t flown that far before landing.
Still trying to clear his mind, he placed his hands on his hips. What now? They needed to get off this mountain before the thugs found them. “Can you guide me back down to Fort Madison?”
She crossed her arms and glared at him, then angled her body so she had a view of the smoldering plane.
“Look, I understand your suspicions, and I’m sorry I wasn’t up-front with you.” The less she knew the better, for her own safety. “I’m a drug enforcement agent. I was set up by another agent so it looks like I was working with drug dealers. I needed to get this plane back. It has evidence that could clear me.”
“And you came up here all by yourself? Don’t you people usually work as a team? Even if you are a DEA agent, I’m sure they end up on the wrong side of the law all the time.”
Without the evidence, he had no idea who in the home office would even believe that he’d been framed. As far as the agency was concerned, he’d gone rogue. Though DEA work involved a level of deception with undercover work, he knew it was for the cause of justice. He was a man who always tried to do the right thing. It bothered him that his character had been so smeared by Lee’s frame-up. The only thing that bothered him more right now was the way Abigail was looking at him with suspicion.
“Look, we both need to get out of here and back to civilization as fast as possible.” He took a step toward her.
Her mouth twitched, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Please trust me. I’m one of the good guys.”
“Trust you?” The word seemed to upset her, when he had hoped that it would build a bridge between them.
“Abigail, what are you going to do? Those men are armed and they still have gear and food.”
Again, she studied him for a long moment, probably considering her options.
He took a step toward her. “I need your expertise to get out of these mountains as fast as possible, and you need my protection in case those guys do catch up with us.”
She stared at him, her mouth drawn into a tight line. “I wish I had my backpack.” She turned sideways in the direction from which they had come.
He let out a breath. At least now she seemed to be in problem-solving mode. Maybe she was starting to come around, regardless of what she might think of him. “Going back for your gear is not an option. The fire is dying out in that plane. I’ll go back in there and see if there’s anything we can use.”
A raindrop hit his nose. Good for drowning the fire, not so good for staying dry.
Abigail jogged toward the forest. “We can stay drier in the trees.”
He liked the use of the word we. She seemed to understand the need for them to stay together. Really, he needed her more than she needed him. She was an experienced guide. She probably knew how to defend herself against man and animal. He was a city boy and could not navigate his way out of a paper bag in an environment like this.
By the time he reached the edge of the forest, the drizzle had turned into a downpour. The fire would be put out that much faster. Unless other people were close by, the chance of the smoke alerting someone other than the criminals that a plane had crash-landed was close to zero. The fire hadn’t burned long enough and the smoke hadn’t risen high enough for it to be seen in town.
It was possible that there were other hikers in these mountains who might alert authorities once they returned to Fort Madison. But Fort Madison was a three-day hike away. Help from the outside was not something they could count on.
Abigail found shelter underneath the long branches of an older evergreen. She crouched down and pulled her knees toward her chest. He sat down beside her. The rain pelted against the higher branches, but he and Abigail remained relatively dry.
“We need to assess what we have to work with. I have a Swiss Army knife I always carry with me, an energy bar in my jacket pocket and waterproof matches,” Abigail said matter-of-factly.
He liked that she was thinking about how they were going to get off this mountain. “I have a gun with eight bullets left in it.” He rifled through the pockets of his jacket. “And a metro pass, a very old piece of hard candy, a couple of paper clips, a pocket Bible and a tire gauge I forgot to put back in my toolbox the last time I checked my tire pressure.”
She
