Hopefully the town performed regular maintenance on the craft. “Who are you?”
“Brock Osprey. Temporary pilot today.”
She stiffened. “Osprey?”
“Yep.” The plane instantly started rolling down the ice, hitching and wobbling.
That last name was not a good coincidence, by any means. Her voice wavered, and she planted a hand against the door. “You’re one of Hank Osprey’s adopted kids.” She only had Brock’s name and the fact that he’d served as a Navy SEAL in her slim FBI file and hoped to have his military records soon.
“Yep.”
Just wonderful. “Hank’s murder is one of the cases I’m here to investigate.” The most important one, and her main reasonfor heading to the small town. Another chill skittered down her spine. Why had she left the gun in the pack?
Brock yanked the levers back, and the craft lifted unsteadily into the air. A gust of wind hit them, pushing them sideways. Dark clouds rolled in from the west, visible from their vantage point off the ground. “At the moment, an old death is the least of your worries.” He yanked the stick, and the plane continued to bump through the air, climbing higher.
“Hank died about a year ago. That’s not an old death.”
Brock grunted. Again. “A year is an eon when you live in the middle of nowhere.” A gust of wind shoved them to the side.
“Maybe, we, well, should we wait until the storm passes?” she whispered, even her lips trembling.
Another wind gust slashed them, and he tightened his hold on the stick. “The storm never passes, sweetheart. Not in Knife’s Edge.”
She started to ask more questions when a large facility to the east caught her attention. A massive antenna field, satellite dishes, and grids of transmitters spread out from a sprawling concrete building and covered at least fifty acres. “What in the world is that place?”
“That’s the Electromagnetic Vibrational Experiment,” he said, spelling out the letters with an almost casual tone. “We call it EVE. It began as a government project, but a private corporation took over years ago. They study the ionosphere.”
She turned to him again, nodding to keep him talking.
He sighed but appeased her. “They only let the mail and supply plane that comes twice a month in the winter land on their runway—when it can get in. Sometimes it can take months with our weather. I’m surprised you haven’t heard the conspiracy theories about that place that run the gamut between manipulating the weather to mind control experiments. It’s all bunk. The facility just conducts research. So they say.”
She shifted to look out the window. “Can we fly closer?”
“No. Restricted airspace, except for their own supply plane.” He made another adjustment. The wind battered the small craft.
“Restricted airspace in the Alaskan wilderness? I do love a good puzzle.” She had to figure out this one.
“That isn’t a puzzle, and it’s not what you’re here to do,” he said mildly.
Interesting. Was that a warning? She switched topics to throw him off-balance. “Who do you think murdered Hank Osprey? You must’ve cared about him, right?”
“Yes, and nobody murdered him. Nobody wanted Hank dead.” Brock’s tone remained calm, but tension showed in his firmer grip on the stick.
Oh, he definitely knew more than he let on. “Don’t you want to know for sure? I will find out what happened.” Whether Brock and his town liked it or not, she excelled at digging for the truth—and this marked her last chance to keep her job. She couldn’t give up.
Brock gave one of those grunts she couldn’t decipher. “That’s your choice.” His face might as well have been carved from the jagged rocks around them. “Hold on. We have to drop fast. It’s going to be a rough landing.”
CHAPTER TWO
Brock Osprey didn’t have time to deal with many things in the world, and a pretty FBI agent—city girl, no less—with eyes as blue as a deep lake and an ass made for a man’s hands topped the list. Hell. At the moment, shewasthe list. The woman smelled like fresh strawberries, and wasn’t that a pisser? He loved strawberries.
He unceremoniously plunked Ophelia’s luggage on Widow Flossy’s weathered front porch before knocking heavily on the door. The wind whistled from the west, a foreboding chill that was coming fast, knocking against the cheerful Christmas lights already iced over on her eaves.
A shuffle came from inside, and then the door opened a crack, cloudy brown eyes looking way up from a tiny face. “Brock.” She pulled the door open all the way, and her scrawny neck stretched as she craned to see beyond him. “I thought you planned to fly the FBI agent lady back to Anchorage.”
A huff of breath, feminine and somehow a little sexy, came from behind him.
“Nope.” He grabbed both suitcases again and strode inside, carefully wiping his boots on the interior Chirstmasy green welcome mat covering Flossy’s polished wooden floor. AChristmas tree decorated in red and silver sparkled from the corner, and a row of Santas appeared to march across the fireplace mantle. “She in the blue room?”
