Page 33 of No Hope of Rescue

The third cabin is a wash as well, mostly because there’s been a fire. Riley’s hand clamps around my bicep before she takes it all in. For a moment, I too panic, but the fire site is from the fall or last summer. As we approach, it becomes clear that mounded snow sits capped on charred debris.

“It’s old,” I shout over my shoulder.

Her hand releases. I radio in the coordinates in case the fire has gone unreported. I make a circular motion with my index finger to reverse us, and Ross swings the copter wide to circle back to the plane crash.

This time, he drops us lower, just above the trees, but he keeps the nose up. My face burns despite the cold. The moment I was thrown back to that terrible day didn’t go unnoticed—Ross keeps glancing over.

I’ve never told anyone what happened. Even the earnest psychologist I saw afterward was never privy to details—or if they were, they didn’t get them from me.

I lean toward the two of them. “These guys have artifacts that can be damaged by weather.”

Riley sticks her head between us. “Can we drop any lower? They’re going to have to move those crates. The snow’s stopped.” She shouts to be heard above the whirring blades.

“You’re thinking tracks?”

She nods.

I hand her the second pair of military-grade binoculars.

Within minutes, the crash site appears, and it’s immediately clear there’s been some activity. Someone’s traveled from the crash site into the woods. Unfortunately, the trees are still too thick to follow tracks. I press the binoculars to my face and keep trying to scope in but can’t see anything. If we hover, I might be able to, but hanging in one spot looks awfully suspicious. And we’ve already made three passes.

Maybe they’ll think someone is looking for my body.

The thought makes me sick—poor Codie. They’ll be talking about it. About me.

The blue-green blur of trees is suddenly lit with brilliant sunlight. And there, in front of us, a thin spiral of smoke drifts up, dissipating just above the trees. Riley immediately points.

I nod and Ross leans toward me, shouting, “You ready?”

He’s going to nose her down in order to gain a little height. The cabin is an expanded ranch and sits long and low in a small dip in the mountain and before another rise of rock and trees.

I nod again and make a conscious effort not to grip the handle. This time, it lasts a fraction of a second. Like ghosts passing through me—the thirteen servicemembers killed, my co-pilot eviscerated, that feeling of my stomach becoming detached, floating up, being outside my body and looking down on the twisted metal, the fire in the tail section, bodies handing upside down or crumpled on the ground. I exhale very slowly, controlled.

And I count.

I have to get back to where we are now. Right now. I have to force my mind back. Codie needs me. My brothers are counting on me. There’s a sudden tug on my heart, like a wakeup-call: nothing can happen to Riley.

Ever.

It’s that tug, Riley’s face swimming in my mind, always there, and then the weight of her hand on my shoulder again that makes the flashback just that—gone in a flash.

Within half a second, I shut it down. Correction: the weight of Riley’s hand on me shuts it down.

Though we’re moving fast, the helicopter is chopping through thinning air. If we get above 10,000 feet, we won’t be able to hover.

Ross must spin the blades faster so we can hover and get a better look. The structure is a faux log cabin—the logs are way too even—but it looks rough. A rusty metal roof caps a structure in need of repair. Two windows are boarded up. Pieces of metal or wood are piled outside near the front and there’re bags of trash stacked against the back wall facing the trees.

This is someone’s hunting cabin. There’s no decipherable road leading from the property, which means they must have to RV it.

I triangulate the coordinates and radio my brothers. It’ll take them a good hour to get here, and I’m not sure what the next move is, but Riley grips both my shoulders, then points to the back side of the cabin.

Someone is emerging from a window.

It’s Codie.

Chapter Nine

Brock Weston