TWENTY-FIVE
By the time they left Fort Carson and headed back to the motel, the temperature was sliding toward freezing. To the north, the sky had turned an ominous shade of bluish purple, a harbinger of snow.
Jessie was driving. Bran fidgeted occasionally, not used to someone else being in control. She might have smiled if she weren’t so worried and disappointed. As it was, unless Coffman talked, they had reached a dead end.
“So what do we do now?” she asked into the gloomy silence muted only by the hum of the Honda’s engine.
“I talked to Hunter Brady,” Bran said. “He’s one of the PIs at The Max in San Diego. Hunt ran a check on Mara Ramos, says the DMV address for her is still valid. Mara lives in an apartment in La Jolla.”
“We really need to talk to her.” Though she definitely wasn’t looking forward to meeting her dad’s...what? Paramour? Mistress? Hookup? Or was she someone who’d been involved in the conspiracy that got him killed?
If Bran was right, Mara could have slept with her father to gain access to his credit cards and other personal data in order to help the thieves deposit money in an offshore account in his name.
Bran stared out the window at the overcast sky. “Storm’s sweeping down from the north. I’ll check with FAA flight service, see if I can figure a way to fly south before the bad weather hits. If we can get out of Colorado, we should be able to make sunny California easy enough.”
“Sounds good.”
“As soon as we get back to the motel, we’ll check things out and make a plan. Colt may be there by now with my gear.”
Bran’s tall blond friend was there, indeed. Waiting inside their room though he didn’t have a key. Bran seemed unfazed.
“Jessie, this is Colt Wheeler. We met in the army. He’s the guy who helped me bring Tank in.” Blond and blue-eyed, even with a black patch over one eye and a scar along his jaw, the guy was beyond good-looking. Or maybe the war wounds were part of his sex appeal.
Jessie had more than she could handle with one hot male. “Nice to meet you, Colt. Thanks for helping Brandon.”
He just shrugged. “No problem.” He had a broad-shouldered, V-shaped build similar to Bran’s, probably from years of the same kind of training. “Just glad he’s out of jail.”
“Me, too,” Jessie said. While they talked, Bran phoned FAA flight service, but Jessie couldn’t hear the conversation.
“So where does your investigation go from here?” Colt asked her.
“If the weather holds, Bran’s flying us down to California to talk to a woman my father was dating when he was killed. She disappeared just days after he died and no one’s seen her since.”
Bran ended the call. “We’ve got about a two-hour window to get the plane in the air. After that, the weather’ll keep us grounded.”
“Then you better get going,” Colt said. “Your gear bag’s on the bed. You coming back this way?”
“Jessie lives in Denver, so yeah, eventually we’ll be back.”
Or at least she would be. Bran would be going back to Dallas. The weight that suddenly pressed like a steel ball on her chest was not a good sign.
Colt took off, Jessie changed into jeans, winter boots, and a sweater, and they checked out of the motel. No use keeping the room not knowing how long they’d be in California or where the investigation might lead next. As they loaded the stuff in her car, Bran made a sweep of the vehicle with the bug detector he’d retrieved from his gear bag. Jessie breathed a sigh of relief when the car came up clean.
Bran had called ahead and had the twin-engine Baron towed out of its hangar. Gleaming white with a narrow blue stripe, it sat waiting, fueled and ready for takeoff. It seemed Bran spent an inordinate amount of time doing his exterior flight check, and it occurred to her he was look for more than GPS tracking devices. Her stomach knotted as she realized he was searching for explosives.
Eventually, he seemed satisfied and they climbed into the cockpit. Jessie didn’t like the thought of flying in rough weather, but she had faith in the pilot. They settled themselves in the seats, strapped in, and put on their headsets. Bran completed the flight check, cleared with the tower, the engine revved, and the plane began to roll down the tarmac.
“How far will we be going today?” Jessie asked, communicating through the mic on her headset as the Baron lifted into the air.
“It won’t be too long before dark and the weather starts closing in. We’ll stay out of the mountains, head south over the valley, then turn west to Albuquerque. It’s a little less than a two-hour flight. We’ll spend the night there, get an early start, fly on down to San Diego in the morning.”
She relaxed back in her seat. It sounded like a good plan.
Or it did until the plane flew into a cloud bank a few miles south of town and started pitching and shaking.
“Hang on. It’s just turbulence. We’ll be out of it in a minute.”
The plane battled through the rough air and flew on. Eventually, the flight smoothed out enough for her to enjoy the view over the flat, arid landscape. Mountains rose on both sides, some covered with snow, but they were miles away. She was just beginning to relax when the engine started sputtering, and an odd shudder rippled through the cabin.
