“It’s passable here, but any number of old bridges or culverts could be washed out farther down,” Emma said.
Mikey started walking toward the Golden Road, looking down as he went. “There’s been traffic up here since last spring.” He moved the bushes and checked their branches. “There’s broken twigs here, but they’re weathered.”
“Any number of people like to see where these old roads lead,” Emma said, trailing behind him and studying the gravel. “That doesn’t mean it was Wayne.”
They walked on in silence, looking for any signs of recent use. “Maybe this is no longer a drop site,” Emma said after a time. “Maybe it never was.”
Mikey suddenly stopped and hunched down, touching the ground in front of him. “This track is fresh,” he said, looking around. He stood up and walked back a few steps. “And look. A truck turned here.” He grabbed a bush and fingered a broken branch. “This is new.”
Emma walked up and looked at the tracks in the road. They werefresh. She looked in both directions and then up the forested mountain. For the second time that day, a chill brushed down her spine.
“Someone was here today,” she said, continuing on until she came to a mud puddle with a tire track through it, the ground still wet from the splash of the truck passing. “Not long ago.” She turned to her nephew. “We’re going back to the plane, Mikey. I don’t like this.”
“Aw, Nem. It’s just getting interesting.”
“No, it’s getting creepy. What are the chances that two different parties ended up in this particular spot at the same time?”
“We couldn’t have been followed. We flew here.”
“But Wayne knew I had been in his desk. He might be checking to see if I discovered the coordinates and came here.”
“He knew? How?”
Emma felt her face redden. “I must have rearranged something in his desk. Or maybe he counts his stationery.”
Mikey did his own scan of the area, suddenly looking worried. “If Wayne’s been using these woods to run drugs, then he knows them well. He’d know where we’d land our plane. Maybe we should head back and make sure it hasn’t been discovered.”
“We’re going to check that plane out with a magnifying glass,” Emma said as she started up the road, searching for a game trail that turned off to the northwest. “And then we’re flying home and dropping this whole thing. It’s not worth our getting involved.”
She was talking to the trees. Mikey was still standing in the road, staring at her.
“Not worth getting involved? Nem, we can’t just do nothing. The guy could be running drugs.”
“It’s not our problem. We’ll tell Ramsey, and let him decide what to do.”
“But where’s your sense of citizenship?”
“It’s hiding behind my sense of responsibility,” she countered, walking back to him. “Your safety and my safety come first. Drug dealers are dangerous and without conscience, and we are not going to put ourselves in the middle of this.”
He simply started walking up through the forest until they came to the mountain, then turned south and skirted it.
Emma walked quietly behind him. Well, she’d done it now. Michael Sands could be one stubborn, ugly dog when he got a bone between his teeth.
She knew he would go to Ben as soon as the man got back, and tell him their suspicions and persuade him to do something about it. And she would have absolutely no control over what they decided.
Michael Sands had apparently had enough of female guidance.
Chapter Fourteen
I t took them halfan hour to reach the plane, and it felt like the longest trek Emma had ever made. Silence can be such a wearing thing, especially when the longer it continues, the wider the void becomes. Right now there was a distance growing between her and Mikey nearly as wide as Medicine Lake.
“It looks to be riding low on one side,” Mikey said as they approached the plane, speaking for the first time since they’d left the road.
Sure enough, one of the floats was sitting on the bottom of the pond, making the Cessna look like a wounded bird with its wings spread out for balance.
Dammit, someone was out here with them.
And whoever it was didn’t want them leaving by air.
“We’re going over every inch of it,” she said, remembering Ben’s tampered-with oil pan and lug nuts.
Scrambling onto the still-floating pontoon, Emma opened the engine cowling and peered inside with a small flashlight. Running her light along the wiring and hoses, it wasn’t long before she found trouble.
“He wasn’t a very imaginative saboteur,” she told her nephew as she fingered a severed hose. “He simply cut the fuel line in half.”
“Then he doesn’t know you very well. You always shut off the fuel,” Mikey answered, unlocking the door to the plane and throwing their packs inside. Then he climbed up onto the wing. Emma heard him sigh. “He snapped off the radio antenna.”
Emma walked to the back compartment of the plane and rummaged around in her toolbox. Mikey had more confidence in her preparedness than she did. She doubted she had any fuel line, or anything else she could substitute. She always kept her plane in perfect flying condition, and the fuel line was not something one expected to break.
“What’s the damage to the float?” she asked as she searched for anything resembling a hose.
“It looks like he took an ax to it just below the waterline. Any luck with the hose?”
“No, Mikey. I don’t have one.”
“Are you sure?”
She popped her head out and bent to look under the fuselage so she could frown at him. “The plane had its annual inspection just last month. Why would I need to carry around a bunch of spare parts?”
“Maybe because you have this thing about always being prepared? So what are we going to do?”
Emma looked around at the beaver flowage and the endless forest. “We walk.”
Mikey looked around also. “Right into an ambush?”
The sun chose that very moment to hide behind a cloud, adding its own warning.
“Then we fly out,” she said with more confidence than she was feeling.
“How?”
“We conjure up some Yankee ingenuity and make this lady flyable. Here,” she said, handing him the pieces of hose she had removed from the engine. “Find a way to splice this while I check for other damage.”
Mikey took the hose, they ducked into the back compartment and began to search for something useful. Emma looked at the engine again.
Ten minutes went by before she felt a tug on her shirt. “Here. This is the best I can do,” Mikey told her as he handed up the repaired fuel line.
Emma looked at it, then at her nephew. “Duct tape? What have you got stiffening it so it won’t collapse?”
“I pulled some conduit out of the tail section. It was tight, but I was able to slide the severed ends of the hose over it and tape them together.” He hesitated, giving her an uncertain look. “It should hold long enough to get home. But even if it works, we still can’t fly with that hole in the float,” he added, glancing at the sunken pontoon.
Emma smiled at him, nodding in approval and reassurance. The poor boy had been asked to do something that put both their lives on the line, and he didn’t like it. She worked the repaired hose back into place.
“We’ve restricted the flow somewhat, but if it can get us airborne, then you’ve worked a miracle, Mikey. Now let’s see about floating this plane. Grab that bicycle pump and truck tire tube from in back, would you?”
“But the float has a hole the size of a basketball, Nem. Duct tape won’t hold, and a rubber patch will never be strong enough to withstand the pressure.”