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“It’s no problem,” he insisted, rounding the truck to the driver’s seat.
She didn’t budge from where she stood in front of his truck. Her lips twitched, but she didn’t speak.
He met her eyes. Why did she have to be so stubborn, anyway? “Elise?”
She looked from him to the passenger seat and back again. “I don’t know.”
Folding his hands over the hood of the truck, he leaned on his arms and looked at her. “Why not? You need a ride, and the airfield is on my way. It’s no big deal.”
“If Uncle Leroy sees me with you—”
Cutch blew out an exasperated breath. He knew the McAlisters didn’t like his family, but he couldn’t imagine Elise’s father’s brother getting into that big of a fit. Still, if she was concerned… “I’ll hide,” he offered.
The little hint of a smile that peeked out at him warmed his heart, though a second later she replaced it with a scowl. “I don’t want to keep you from your busy schedule.”
Thinking of his father’s exam that he’d already missed, he shrugged. “If I say I have time to drop you off, I have time.”
Elise took a tentative step toward the passenger side of the truck, then looked back at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
For a moment the humid air stilled between them, and that simple courtesy seemed to shout so much more. Could thank you mean I still love you? Or I’m sorry for the past eight years? Or even I wish none of our family’s feud had ever come between us? He thought he heard those words hidden between her simple thanks, but then he’d always been a dreamer. Time to pull his head out of the clouds.
“No problem.” Cutch nodded and hopped in the driver’s side, relieved when Elise climbed in, too. “So, to the airport,” he announced, turning the key. “What are you planning to do when you get there?”
“I’m going to take my Cessna up and fly over your property. I’ve got a portable GPS unit that I can use to get the exact coordinates of my glider’s location. Then I can take the GPS with me to find the spot when I go on foot to retrieve it.”
Cutch turned the truck around and headed back out onto the gravel road. “You’re planning to retrieve your glider, hmm? Do you have permission from the property owner to be on the land?” The words were meant to be a gentle tease. He hoped they’d elicit a smile.
But instead her pretty face frowned. “You said it was your land.”
“That’s right. So are you going to ask for my permission, or are you planning to trespass illegally?”
“Cutch,” she protested. “I can’t believe you’re making an issue of this—especially after what I’ve been through today.”
Hurt that she’d taken his words the wrong way, he defended himself, still maintaining the lighthearted undertone he’d begun with, though she obviously hadn’t picked up on it. “Yeah, well, I’ve recently become aware of issues with trespassers on my land. Apparently some of them shot down a hang glider earlier, so I feel like I need to crack down.” He glanced over to gauge her reaction.
“You’re a couple hours too late to do my glider any good.”
Something in the back of his brain screamed mayday! He couldn’t let her be mad at him—couldn’t let her walk out of his life again, not with her angry like this. “Then let me make it up to you. Take me up in your plane, and I’ll help you find the spot it went down.”
“I don’t think so!” she snapped.
“Why not? I know the land better than anyone. I can help you locate your glider more quickly, and I may be able to spot signs of where your gunmen may have been when they shot at you. If we could find an empty casing or footprint, then the sheriff would have something to come out and take a look at.”
Elise shook her head forcefully. “I can find my glider myself. Once I get a GPS lock on the location, I can find it from the ground. I don’t need your help.”
“But you need my permission to be on my land.”
“Did the gunmen have your permission?”
They were nearly to the airport by this time, and Cutch felt his hackles rising. What had started out as a hint of teasing had blown way out of proportion, but why was he surprised? Elise still knew how to push his buttons. It was a good reminder of why things hadn’t worked out between them eight years ago—why they would never work out. But he still wasn’t about to let her fly into danger alone. He’d never forgive himself if she was shot down a second time.
“The gunmen were trespassing—” he let his tone drop to a low, even rate, let the warning carry through in his words “—and if I ever find out who it was, you can believe I’ll press charges. Nobody hurts you and gets away with it.”
Elise felt a shiver run down her spine at the chilly threat behind Cutch’s words. But what made her nearly gasp was the zealous protection implied in his final statement. Didn’t he realize how much he had hurt her? Just the memory of the way he’d set her up for humiliation eight years before made her heart squeeze and the old wounds cry out in pain. Their first and only kiss, the moment she’d dreamed about since she’d first fallen in love with him, had turned out to be a trick, a stunt he’d pulled to embarrass her in front of half of Holyoake. In fact, their entire relationship had been a farce, another way for a McCutcheon to humiliate a McAlister.
Still, she figured she was mature enough to work with him without letting on to the distress he caused her heart. She’d just have to keep him at arm’s length and stomp down any tender feelings, such as those that had flooded her when he’d put his arm around her on the viewing tower. Surely she could handle that…
“I’d like to come with you. I’m sure I can help.” Cutch announced matter-of-factly as he parked the truck behind the hangar and killed the engine.
What could she say? He seemed intent on going up with her, and honestly, after the terror she’d felt that morning, it would be an enormous comfort to have along a strong man she could trust. She just wasn’t convinced Cutch was that man. But she was in a hurry to find her glider, and he was probably correct about being able to help her quickly locate it in the thick trees. She’d scrambled through the woods in such a blur that little clear memory remained to guide her.
“If I’m not imposing on your time—”
“You’re not.”
“Then let’s hurry. I still don’t want Uncle Leroy to see you.”
They ducked out of the truck and went around the hangar to the door facing the airfield. “Leroy’s probably in the office. He and Rodney are usually the only ones around on Saturdays,” Elise explained, opening the wide hangar door. “They shouldn’t see us if we use this door.”
She hurried over to her Cessna 172 Skyhawk and patted the white-with-red-stripes plane affectionately on one wing. “This is my baby,” she informed Cutch.
“Looks like your baby is older than you are.”
“She is,” Elise admitted, circling the plane as she initiated her preflight check. “But I’m saving my pennies to buy her a little sister. Aren’t I, darling?” She gave the rudder a gentle tug. “Anyway, she’s a good little bird and keeps me in the sky, which is more than I can say for my powered hang glider.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance somebody will try to shoot this girl down, do you?” Cutch looked concerned.
Elise faced him under the wing. “We should be out of the range of a shotgun. I fly my glider at a lot lower elevation than I fly my plane.”
“But when you’re dusting crops—”
“That’s different.” Elise wasn’t fond of crop dusting and wished her aerial photography business was self-sustaining enough so she could give up working for her uncle. But so far, her dreams had yet to pan out. “I’m capable of flying low, but I wouldn’t try it in those hills. Besides, this plane is a lot faster and way more maneuverable than my glider. I can get out in a hurry at the first sign of trouble.”
Cutch seemed to accept her response and stayed quiet as she finished checking the plane and climbed aboard. She reached behind his seat for the extra headset and noticed her camera still in the backseat of the four-seat plane. A thought occurred to her.
“Do you know much about taking pictures?” she asked.
He grinned back slyly. “Don’t you recall my 4-H entries?”
Elise almost smiled back, but then she remembered the year he’d swept the purple ribbon right out from under her. She’d been nine years old, he eleven, and though she now realized the composition of his scenic Loess Hills landscape had been precociously perfect, at the time, she’d been devastated. Her father had chalked up the incident to just another example of how she couldn’t trust a McCutcheon. “Can you still use a camera?”
“Maybe not as well as you can, but well enough.”
She handed him the digital camera and explained. “It’s all set for aerial photographs, so all you’ll have to do is point and shoot. Oh, and don’t erase the stuff on my memory card—I was out with Rodney yesterday taking pictures of the Mitchum’s corn maze. I haven’t had a chance to download the pictures yet.”
Cutch accepted the camera from her. “How’s the aerial photography business going?”
Her mind focused on the preflight check, Elise murmured a distracted response. “It keeps me busy, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I have to pay a pilot to take me up since it’s impossible to fly and take pictures at the same time. That takes a big chunk out of my profit.” She toggled a switch. “So I still do crop dusting for Leroy on the side.”
“That’s too bad. You’re such a talented photographer.”
Cutch’s comment surprised Elise, and she looked up from her checklist to find him leaning across his seat toward her, his face much nearer to hers than she’d have liked inside the close quarters of the cockpit. She felt her cheeks turn red and looked nervously back down at the laminated booklet in her hands. “As I recall, you’re the one who won the purple ribbon.”
“Only once. You won it every other year.”
“But that’s the year I remember.” When she dared to glance back up at him, she found him still leaning her way, still looking at her in that unsettling way that made her heart leap inside her more violently than it did during a bad landing.
“Funny what we choose to remember,” he said, chuckling softly and turning away to adjust the headset over his ears.
Elise pulled her attention back to her preflight checklist. She had to focus. Though she’d been flying for years and knew the drill backward and forward, having Cutch in her plane was just the kind of distraction that could cause her to miss something, and today was the last day she wanted that to happen.
“Sky Belle to Big Bird, Sky Belle to Big Bird.” She radioed Uncle Leroy in the office.
“Sky Belle, this is Big Bird. What are you up to this morning?”
Elise relayed their flight plan to her uncle, who okayed her for takeoff. Fortunately, he didn’t ask any questions about why she was headed out. If she’d talked to him in person first, he certainly would have done so then, but she knew he liked to keep their radio conversations strictly professional, which was why she’d waited until she was in the plane to talk to him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect anything strange was up.
With Cutch safely buckled in, Elise taxied out and lifted off, feeling more in control with her plane in the air than she had since she’d heard the first shot that morning. She was at home in the sky. It was her peaceful retreat where none of the pain in her life—not her absent mother or her struggling business or the ongoing feud with the McCutcheons—could trouble her. The invasion of her peace was just another reason why the attack that morning had disturbed her so deeply.
The airspace of southwestern Iowa was empty as usual, and the clear skies and gentle breeze made for perfect flying conditions. They quickly and uneventfully found themselves closing in on Cutch’s pecan grove. Elise aligned the plane with what she could recall of her flight path that morning.
“We’re right above where I was flying earlier,” she explained to Cutch. “We’re coming up on the spot where I heard the first shot.”
“When we get to that area, can you try to get a little closer and maybe circle around? I haven’t had the opportunity to fly over the property in years, not since my Grandpa McCutcheon used to give me flying lessons, but I’d like to think if there was something out of place I’d be able to spot it from the air.”
“Sure,” Elise agreed. “There’s a pretty wide valley about there where it’s almost level for a good stretch. I shouldn’t have any trouble coming around.” She eased the plane a little lower in the sky. “Seems like I was right around here when I heard the first shot.”
Cutch had his face nearly plastered to the window. “Right there,” he said with excitement. “I see something below us. Can you come around again?”
“Go ahead and open that window,” Elise instructed as she swung the plane in a wide arc. “I’ve taken the screw out so you can remove the pane and stick your head out. You can even use the camera outside the window. Just make sure you don’t drop it.”
Elise kept her eyes on where she was headed, focusing on maneuvering between the tree-covered hills, but she heard the air rush in as Cutch successfully removed the Plexiglas window.
“Does that give you a better view?”
“Much better.” He started clicking away with the camera before asking, “Is this close to where they started shooting at you?”
“We just passed over the spot. Why?”
Cutch pulled his head in and lowered the camera. “I know why they were shooting at you. And you’re probably right—they weren’t just trying to spook you. I think they wanted you dead.”
THREE
“What?” Elise startled at the controls and had to force herself to pay attention to what she was doing. Her pulse rate kicked up. Though the nature of the attack had indicated malicious intent, she’d been trying to convince herself ever since that the cause was more innocent. She didn’t like what the alternative implied. “Are you serious?”
“I wish I could say I was joking. And I really wish I hadn’t seen what I just saw.” His words sounded somber, strained.
“What was it?” Elise nearly screeched in her fear and impatience.
“I’m almost certain that was an anhydrous ammonia tank down there.”
“Anhydrous ammonia? What’s so sinister about that?” The white tanks, their sides and ends brightly painted with warnings identifying the volatile contents, were a common site in agrarian Holyoake County. “Farmers use anhydrous all the time on their crops. I see those tanks every day.”
“Not in a pecan grove, you don’t.” Cutch replaced the window, and the air stilled inside the small cabin.
The relative silence felt suddenly oppressive. “I take it the tank doesn’t belong to you?”
“Absolutely not.” The force behind Cutch’s statement surprised Elise. “I don’t know how it got out there or who brought it out there. But unfortunately, I think I know what they’re using it for.”
Elise recalled reading something about anhydrous in a newspaper article some time back, but she hadn’t had a reason to pay much attention then. Now she tried to recall what the article had said. “Something about drugs?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Drugs.” Cutch took a couple of deep breaths. From the corner of her eye, Elise could see his broad chest rise and fall, straining against the shoulder strap of his safety restraint. “I think someone’s making methamphetamine. On my property.”
Barely suppressed anger simmered in the air. Elise wished she knew what she could say to comfort him, be cause he appeared to be quite distraught by his discovery.
Finally she asked the question that had been haunting her. “And that’s why they shot at me? They think I saw what they were doing?”
“That would be my guess.” Cutch concluded. “And as much as I don’t like it, I’d also guess they know who you are. Most of the county is aware you’re the only person with a powered hang glider in these parts, just like pretty much everybody knows you’re into aerial photography. They might even think you already took a picture of them or were about to before they started shooting.”
Elise’s stomach plummeted as she dipped the plane back around, heading back out along the path her wounded glider had taken. For the first time, she regretted all the publicity she’d done to promote her fledgling business—the glider tutorial at the Holyoake County Fair, the aerial show during the Holyoake Fall Festival. Cutch was right. Everyone knew exactly what she did. And anyone who saw her flying over their drugmaking operation would logically conclude she not only saw them but was able to take pictures of what they were up to.
Ironically, Elise would have loved to be able to take pictures from her glider, but she’d never figured out a way to make it work. Too bad the gunmen hadn’t known that.
Pinching back the terrifying thoughts that filled her mind, Elise focused on the job at hand. “Okay. We’re coming up on where I think I lost my glider. I need you to get a lock on the spot with the GPS. Then I’ll go back over the anhydrous tank, and you can capture the coordinates of that location, too.” She quickly filled him in on how to use the GPS device.
With Cutch’s help, they spotted the glider, and she got both coordinates in a short time.
Elise pointed them back toward the airfield. She didn’t like what they’d learned. The idea that the gunmen might know her identity and want her dead was a chilling thought. Unfortunately, they seemed to know a lot more about her than she knew about them. That put her at a marked disadvantage.
The only good news was seeing an empty parking space where her uncle Leroy’s truck had been sitting when she’d left. She didn’t want to imagine how her uncle would react at finding a McCutcheon on his property. Both Leroy and her father made no apology for their blatant hatred toward the McCutcheon clan, and they seemed to despise Cutch worst of all.
“Looks like Leroy’s gone for lunch,” she said with relief as she brought the plane down in a smooth landing. “We can use the computer in the office to download those pictures. I want to see exactly what you saw.”
“The pictures should show more than I was able to see from the sky. I zoomed in on the tank as much as I could.”
Elise was impressed he’d thought to do that. “Excellent. That will help us see details more clearly. Maybe we can find something else that will give us an indication of who we’re dealing with.”
She parked the plane, did a quick postflight check and hurried with Cutch to the office where the sign on the door informed them Leroy didn’t expect to be back for another half hour. After making a mental note to be sure to be gone long before Leroy got back, Elise used her key to let them in.
As the pictures uploaded, she clicked through the shots of the Mitchum’s corn maze, which appeared on the screen first.
“Wow,” Cutch leaned over her shoulder as she sat in the only chair at the computer desk. “That’s a complex maze they’ve got going on there.”
Elise tried not to notice how closely he hovered behind her or the way her heart beat faster because he was there. “Yeah, they’re pretty proud of it. It’s their most complicated maze to date, and they’ve been doing this for fifteen years. That’s why they wanted me to take pictures, although they’re for next year’s publicity—they don’t want to give away the secrets of the maze to the general public. That would spoil all the fun.”
“Makes sense,” Cutch agreed in a whisper as Elise clicked through to the first shot of the pecan grove. The anhydrous tank was clearly visible, right down to the block letters on the side that identified its contents.
“Crazy,” Elise murmured. “You’d think they’d at least cover the label.”
