Jonas (Minnesota Marshalls #2)(9)
Author: Susan May Warren
A couple farm implements, but mostly just harvest debris. Still, pieces of Frannie could be scattered all over the field.
He got out, the air brisk although the sun had come out, the sky a bright blue with just a few cirrostratus clouds, high and flat, scattered across the atmosphere.
No snow, at least for a couple days. And a look behind him at Mt. Triglav, jutting bold and white into the sky, said that any weather would have to jockey around it.
For a moment, the memory of his rescue of Ina Novak on said mountain whispered through him.
And not the long stretch of misery carrying Ina to help, but the next morning. After he’d slept like the dead and woke to discover that he’d somehow crashed in the room reserved for Ina and her friend, Sibba.
Oops. Or maybe the reservation had belonged to both of them—Europeans didn’t seem to worry about those things.
The ladies had already risen, and he’d found Ina and Nixon in the kitchen, with the staff arranging for her descent down the mountain on a four-wheeler. The swelling had gone down, and the doctor from the previous night had agreed to ride down with her.
Her friend Sibba, however, wasn’t in the kitchen. And when he’d asked about her, Ina had sent him outside, saying there wasn’t any more room on the four-wheeler.
He’d gone outside and seen an orange-and-blue parachute spread on a grassy hillside, Sibba wearing a harness.
“What are you doing?”
She’d looked up at him then, her tawny-brown hair pulled back into a braid, snaking out of her helmet. She wore a lime-green jacket, leggings, hiking boots, and stood up at his call.
He knew his question was probably stupid—he knew what a parachute looked like. And the quick math said she was a paraglider pilot, but—
“Would you like to go flying?”
The question, borne on the wind, carried to him, and he stood there, his mouth open. “What?” He stepped closer so she didn’t have to yell, walking around the massive limp silks, now undulating in the rising wind.
The storm had wrung itself out over the mountain, and overhead, a clear blue sky, free from any cumulus, suggested a gorgeous day to, um, fly.
The drop from this altitude swept the breath from his lungs, and he preferred his feet on the ground, thank you. At least, he thought he did.
She shook out the lines of her chute. “Ina’s in good hands, and they’re arranging transport for her down the mountain. I’m going to the base to get help. But—I have an extra harness if you want to fly with me.”
And then she smiled at him. The sight of it undid him, a complete about-face to the woman he’d met on the summit yesterday. She was pretty, in a sort of no-nonsense, no-makeup, just-sunshine-and-fresh-air sort of way.
“I…”
“C’mon. I promise, I won’t let you get hurt.”
Something about her smile teased, pulled at him, and crazily, the urge to nod, to walk into her proffered harness and clip on, to soar with her over the mountains, swept over him in a wash of heat and light and—desire.
Yes, that’s what it was. The desire for something more.
So he didn’t know why he raised a hand. “Sorry. I—I think I prefer my feet on the ground.”
She raised her hands, as if in surrender, and shrugged. “Thanks for getting my friend off the mountain! I’ll see you at the bottom.”
Then she picked up her lines and, like a kite, urged the chute into the air. Started running.
The chute lifted her off the ground as gently as a bird taking flight, and she rose on the thermals of the Julian Alps.
He watched her until she became a speck against the blue, and Nixon emerged from the hut to join him.
“Looks like fun.”
“Looks like a good way to die.”
“Better than most,” Nixon had said, said glancing at him.
Jonas gave him a look. Offered a wry smile.
“C’mon, boss, let’s go.”
He’d followed Nixon down the mountain, but by the time they reached the bottom, Ina had been delivered over to medical help.
And Sibba had gone with her.
Still, she’d left an imprint in his mind. Her, huddled on a cliff with her friend one moment, jumping off a mountain the next.
Calling him Spidey. He remembered that way too much, really.
Maybe that’s why he’d told Fraser that he wanted more, back in Lake Como.
Now Jonas climbed over a squat, wooden fence and into the hayfield, past rolled bundles of drying hay, scanning for Frannie, her shiny silver body, or any sign of her.
There. Half buried in the ground, a curved metal spine. Jonas ran over and, as he got closer, spotted the metal nose cone. The back propeller.
More debris cluttered the field, and maybe two hundred yards away, he found the ribbed carcass that had connected to the black box, now twisted and torn, driven into the dirt.
But no black box.
Instead, mounted on the bottom of the carcass, where the black box might have been, hung the remains of a cylinder, burnt and dusty.
He stared at it a long moment, then pulled out his phone and took a few pictures. The silence in the wind combing the field pooled in his ears, running a cold finger down his spine as he processed what he was seeing.
Sometime in the past four days, someone had altered Frannie, attached a device onto her, and from what he could surmise, had detonated said device.
Maybe the storm hadn’t been Frannie’s demise.
He wanted to detach the device, haul it away, but dirt cemented the ribs of the dirigible into the ground, and he’d need a hacksaw, or even a blowtorch, to remove it.
Better to find the black box and analyze the flight data.
He walked around the field, scanning the wreckage, digging up fragments of the frame.
No box.
But according to his GPS data, the box had splashed down here.
He turned and looked at the farmhouse, just beyond a far drive. Maybe the owner had found the box…
A rusty red Allgaier tractor was parked near an old wooden barn. The wind had wrecked a hay bale behind the house, and although it didn’t seem the farm had sustained much damage, the barn doors hung open. A goat stood in the opening, stared at him, then spooked. In a yard near the barn, chickens waddled, pecking.