Out on a Limb

“That’s too bad. You’re such a talented photographer.”

Cutch’s comment surprised Elise, and she looked up from her checklist to find him leaning across his seat toward her, his face much nearer to hers than she’d have liked inside the close quarters of the cockpit. She felt her cheeks turn red and looked nervously back down at the laminated booklet in her hands. “As I recall, you’re the one who won the purple ribbon.”

“Only once. You won it every other year.”

“But that’s the year I remember.” When she dared to glance back up at him, she found him still leaning her way, still looking at her in that unsettling way that made her heart leap inside her more violently than it did during a bad landing.

“Funny what we choose to remember,” he said, chuckling softly and turning away to adjust the headset over his ears.

Elise pulled her attention back to her preflight checklist. She had to focus. Though she’d been flying for years and knew the drill backward and forward, having Cutch in her plane was just the kind of distraction that could cause her to miss something, and today was the last day she wanted that to happen.

“Sky Belle to Big Bird, Sky Belle to Big Bird.” She radioed Uncle Leroy in the office.

“Sky Belle, this is Big Bird. What are you up to this morning?”

Elise relayed their flight plan to her uncle, who okayed her for takeoff. Fortunately, he didn’t ask any questions about why she was headed out. If she’d talked to him in person first, he certainly would have done so then, but she knew he liked to keep their radio conversations strictly professional, which was why she’d waited until she was in the plane to talk to him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect anything strange was up.

With Cutch safely buckled in, Elise taxied out and lifted off, feeling more in control with her plane in the air than she had since she’d heard the first shot that morning. She was at home in the sky. It was her peaceful retreat where none of the pain in her life—not her absent mother or her struggling business or the ongoing feud with the McCutcheons—could trouble her. The invasion of her peace was just another reason why the attack that morning had disturbed her so deeply.

The airspace of southwestern Iowa was empty as usual, and the clear skies and gentle breeze made for perfect flying conditions. They quickly and uneventfully found themselves closing in on Cutch’s pecan grove. Elise aligned the plane with what she could recall of her flight path that morning.

“We’re right above where I was flying earlier,” she explained to Cutch. “We’re coming up on the spot where I heard the first shot.”

“When we get to that area, can you try to get a little closer and maybe circle around? I haven’t had the opportunity to fly over the property in years, not since my Grandpa McCutcheon used to give me flying lessons, but I’d like to think if there was something out of place I’d be able to spot it from the air.”

“Sure,” Elise agreed. “There’s a pretty wide valley about there where it’s almost level for a good stretch. I shouldn’t have any trouble coming around.” She eased the plane a little lower in the sky. “Seems like I was right around here when I heard the first shot.”

Cutch had his face nearly plastered to the window. “Right there,” he said with excitement. “I see something below us. Can you come around again?”

“Go ahead and open that window,” Elise instructed as she swung the plane in a wide arc. “I’ve taken the screw out so you can remove the pane and stick your head out. You can even use the camera outside the window. Just make sure you don’t drop it.”

Elise kept her eyes on where she was headed, focusing on maneuvering between the tree-covered hills, but she heard the air rush in as Cutch successfully removed the Plexiglas window.

“Does that give you a better view?”

“Much better.” He started clicking away with the camera before asking, “Is this close to where they started shooting at you?”

“We just passed over the spot. Why?”

Cutch pulled his head in and lowered the camera. “I know why they were shooting at you. And you’re probably right—they weren’t just trying to spook you. I think they wanted you dead.”

THREE

“What?” Elise startled at the controls and had to force herself to pay attention to what she was doing. Her pulse rate kicked up. Though the nature of the attack had indicated malicious intent, she’d been trying to convince herself ever since that the cause was more innocent. She didn’t like what the alternative implied. “Are you serious?”

“I wish I could say I was joking. And I really wish I hadn’t seen what I just saw.” His words sounded somber, strained.

“What was it?” Elise nearly screeched in her fear and impatience.

“I’m almost certain that was an anhydrous ammonia tank down there.”

“Anhydrous ammonia? What’s so sinister about that?” The white tanks, their sides and ends brightly painted with warnings identifying the volatile contents, were a common site in agrarian Holyoake County. “Farmers use anhydrous all the time on their crops. I see those tanks every day.”

“Not in a pecan grove, you don’t.” Cutch replaced the window, and the air stilled inside the small cabin.

The relative silence felt suddenly oppressive. “I take it the tank doesn’t belong to you?”

“Absolutely not.” The force behind Cutch’s statement surprised Elise. “I don’t know how it got out there or who brought it out there. But unfortunately, I think I know what they’re using it for.”

Elise recalled reading something about anhydrous in a newspaper article some time back, but she hadn’t had a reason to pay much attention then. Now she tried to recall what the article had said. “Something about drugs?” she asked quietly.

“Yes. Drugs.” Cutch took a couple of deep breaths. From the corner of her eye, Elise could see his broad chest rise and fall, straining against the shoulder strap of his safety restraint. “I think someone’s making methamphetamine. On my property.”

Barely suppressed anger simmered in the air. Elise wished she knew what she could say to comfort him, be cause he appeared to be quite distraught by his discovery.

Finally she asked the question that had been haunting her. “And that’s why they shot at me? They think I saw what they were doing?”

“That would be my guess.” Cutch concluded. “And as much as I don’t like it, I’d also guess they know who you are. Most of the county is aware you’re the only person with a powered hang glider in these parts, just like pretty much everybody knows you’re into aerial photography. They might even think you already took a picture of them or were about to before they started shooting.”

Elise’s stomach plummeted as she dipped the plane back around, heading back out along the path her wounded glider had taken. For the first time, she regretted all the publicity she’d done to promote her fledgling business—the glider tutorial at the Holyoake County Fair, the aerial show during the Holyoake Fall Festival. Cutch was right. Everyone knew exactly what she did. And anyone who saw her flying over their drugmaking operation would logically conclude she not only saw them but was able to take pictures of what they were up to.

Ironically, Elise would have loved to be able to take pictures from her glider, but she’d never figured out a way to make it work. Too bad the gunmen hadn’t known that.

Pinching back the terrifying thoughts that filled her mind, Elise focused on the job at hand. “Okay. We’re coming up on where I think I lost my glider. I need you to get a lock on the spot with the GPS. Then I’ll go back over the anhydrous tank, and you can capture the coordinates of that location, too.” She quickly filled him in on how to use the GPS device.

With Cutch’s help, they spotted the glider, and she got both coordinates in a short time.

Elise pointed them back toward the airfield. She didn’t like what they’d learned. The idea that the gunmen might know her identity and want her dead was a chilling thought. Unfortunately, they seemed to know a lot more about her than she knew about them. That put her at a marked disadvantage.

The only good news was seeing an empty parking space where her uncle Leroy’s truck had been sitting when she’d left. She didn’t want to imagine how her uncle would react at finding a McCutcheon on his property. Both Leroy and her father made no apology for their blatant hatred toward the McCutcheon clan, and they seemed to despise Cutch worst of all.

“Looks like Leroy’s gone for lunch,” she said with relief as she brought the plane down in a smooth landing. “We can use the computer in the office to download those pictures. I want to see exactly what you saw.”

“The pictures should show more than I was able to see from the sky. I zoomed in on the tank as much as I could.”

Elise was impressed he’d thought to do that. “Excellent. That will help us see details more clearly. Maybe we can find something else that will give us an indication of who we’re dealing with.”

She parked the plane, did a quick postflight check and hurried with Cutch to the office where the sign on the door informed them Leroy didn’t expect to be back for another half hour. After making a mental note to be sure to be gone long before Leroy got back, Elise used her key to let them in.

As the pictures uploaded, she clicked through the shots of the Mitchum’s corn maze, which appeared on the screen first.

“Wow,” Cutch leaned over her shoulder as she sat in the only chair at the computer desk. “That’s a complex maze they’ve got going on there.”

Elise tried not to notice how closely he hovered behind her or the way her heart beat faster because he was there. “Yeah, they’re pretty proud of it. It’s their most complicated maze to date, and they’ve been doing this for fifteen years. That’s why they wanted me to take pictures, although they’re for next year’s publicity—they don’t want to give away the secrets of the maze to the general public. That would spoil all the fun.”

“Makes sense,” Cutch agreed in a whisper as Elise clicked through to the first shot of the pecan grove. The anhydrous tank was clearly visible, right down to the block letters on the side that identified its contents.

“Crazy,” Elise murmured. “You’d think they’d at least cover the label.”