Brace For Impact

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)

“This?” Maddy Kane balked like a horse that had gotten a good look at the rattlesnake coiled in the middle of the trail. Her feet said, uh-uh. No way. The rest of her was in complete agreement. “We’re flying to the other side of the state in this?”

She’d vaguely noticed the airfield when she drove by and realized it was puny. Somehow she hadn’t translated that into puny airplane.

Having lived in the small and remote town of Republic in eastern Washington the past year, she hadn’t expected to board a Boeing 767 here, with only the one short runway and a few hangars by Lake Curlew. But considering she’d never flown in anything smaller than a 737—she thought that was the Boeing company’s smallest plane—this Cessna didn’t look much bigger than the really terrifying ultralight she’d seen once buzzing over a tulip field, the pilot sitting in what looked like a lawn chair beneath the wings.

Okay, this plane did have a cabin. Still.

The man next to her laughed, the skin beside his eyes crinkling. A United States marshal, Scott Rankin had been her handler throughout her ordeal. Really, her anchor. As horrific as witnessing the murder had been, thinking the killer would see her huddled only a few feet away, she’d never imagined the fallout after calling 911 and telling the detective everything she’d seen and heard. It had now been twelve months since she’d talked to her parents or sister or friends or the man she’d been dating. Supposedly, her law firm was saving her job, but she had to wonder. A year shouldn’t seem so long, but she’d increasingly felt a kinship with Rip Van Winkle. In all these months she’d clung to the knowledge that Rankin was there, a telephone call away.

Graying but still broad-shouldered and strong in his fifties, he had shown her pictures of his wife, adult children and a new granddaughter. He’d been really kind to her. In turn, she’d cooperated with his arrangements. Until now.

How could he think this was the safest way to get her to Seattle, where she was scheduled to testify in a major trial that would begin ten days from now? Safe being a relative concept. So okay, flying commercial wasn’t an option from this part of the state, but until he knocked on her door this morning, she’d assumed they would drive.

That was the moment he’d said cheerfully, “Nope, we’re catching a flight.”

Maddy had envisioned at least the kind of twin-engine passenger plane that carried twenty or thirty people. For one thing...there was a mountain range separating eastern and western Washington. A tall one.

She was already toting her bag when Rankin started across the pavement toward the little plane. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder, “this’ll be fun.”

Oh, Lord. For a minute she stood there breathing too fast, until she realized she didn’t have an option.

Reluctantly, she trailed him.

Another man had been circling the Cessna, doing what she assumed was a flight check, which ought to reassure her. That meant he was safety conscious, right?

“I don’t really like heights,” she mumbled to Marshal Rankin’s back.

The tall, lanky man doing the flight check straightened and, beaming at them, extended his hand. “Couldn’t get better weather for the flight!” he assured Maddy and Rankin.

Sure. By the first day of July in this part of the state, every day was sunny and hot. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a lightning storm over the Cascades. A white-hot bolt from on high, and that little tin can would be zapped.

“You’ll be able to get a good look at the Cascades,” the pilot enthused as if he hadn’t noticed her severe case of doubt. “Bird’s-eye view.”

Maddy squared her shoulders. This was happening, whether she liked it or not. And really, what did she have to fear, compared to the ten minutes when she’d had only a half-open bathroom door between her and a hit man who’d just murdered her new client? This was nothing; people flew in small planes all the time. A lot of people enjoyed it.

The pilot looked familiar, as most locals did. She didn’t remember ever hearing his name, though.

When they shook, he introduced himself. “Bill Potter. You must be Cassie Davis. I know I’ve seen you around. And Mr. Rankin, I assume?”

“That’s right,” the man at her side agreed. “As I told you, Cassie is my niece. You’ll have to excuse her anxiety. I saved the news that we were flying to be a surprise. A drive over one of the passes just isn’t the same.”

Until she stepped into that courtroom, she would remain Cassie Davis, divorced bookkeeper, instead of Madeline Kane, never-married attorney-at-law. Supposedly, she and “Uncle” Scott were heading for a family reunion in Everett, a city only half an hour north of Seattle. She hadn’t asked where she’d be staying. All she knew was that Rankin intended to keep her away from the courthouse until she absolutely had to show. She’d made it through the year in hiding; now she had to remain alive the last few days until she could testify.

The pilot lowered the big door on the hangar and locked it, loaded the two duffel bags in the rear of the plane, then asked her to sit in the back, Rankin in front beside him. “Got to balance our weight,” he explained. Either he was really good at faking it, or he suffered from chronic good humor.

Or, heck, he loved to fly this plane and was brimming with excitement.

And she was being a crank.

So she smiled at him before she crawled over the front seat and buckled herself in, per instructions.

“This is a Cessna Skyhawk,” Bill told her. “One of the safest planes you could fly in.” He had been teaching lessons for something like the past thirty years in this and an earlier model of the Skyhawk, he added, while also offering charter flights.

She held on tight to the seat belt with one hand and the seat itself with the other as he taxied down the runway and the plane lifted into the air. He banked over Republic so she could get a good look at it, he told her over his shoulder.

Despite her queasiness, Maddy did gaze through the window at the town. People had been good to her here. It wasn’t their fault she’d felt incredibly isolated. Living under an assumed name, she could never be honest with anyone about who she was or what life she’d actually lived. That meant being friendly without ever really making a friend. Still...as time passed, she’d felt safe.

Stepping into that courtroom, on the other hand, would be the equivalent of confronting a wounded grizzly.

“You okay back there?” Rankin swiveled in his seat beside the pilot and still had to raise his voice to be heard over the engine noise.

She summoned another smile. “I’m good.” And...maybe it was even true, because as the plane leveled off, her anxiety lowered. If she didn’t look out the window, she could pretend she was on a bus, say. That worked.

As a result she spent the first half hour brooding about the upcoming trial—and then the gap of time between the two trials. Rankin hadn’t said anything about those weeks, except that she wouldn’t be returning to Republic. Of course, she also couldn’t resume her real life until both the hit man and the Superior Court judge who’d hired him had been convicted.

First thing to face was being “prepared” by the prosecutors. As if she hadn’t prepped her share of witnesses for trial. Of course, her perspective as a defense attorney wasn’t quite the same.

The buzz of the engine at last lulled her into letting go of the troubles that still lay ahead. The pilot yelled over his shoulder to tell her they were flying over the Okanogan National Forest, and would shortly cross the Pasayten Wilderness. She vaguely knew that it took in a swath of the drier eastern side of the Cascade Mountain range. Now she did look out the small window, seeing that sagebrush and juniper hills had been replaced with what she thought were lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest.

She gaped when she set eyes on the first pointy, white-topped mountains ahead.

Bill called out the names as they neared: Mount Carru, Blackcap Peak, Robinson Mountain. Maddy pressed her nose to the small window to see better. She was astonished by the amount of snow, given that this was July. Her awe grew as the snowcapped peaks became increasingly jagged, gleaming white in the sunlight. She could just make out deep cuts clothed in dark green between mountains. A long body of water had to be Ross Lake behind its dam. They flew low enough she could see the oddly opaque turquoise color of the water.